The Naked Year (17 page)

Silence.

Whispering.

And through the freight cars the officials run quickly.

In the freight car darkness. An official bolts the door behind him. In the freight car there is silence.

“Wot?” –somebody asks wheezingly. The official breathes quickly and, it seems, joyfully.

“Women, girls–for you!” says the official in a hurried whisper. “I ordered girls and women, the best, to be sent to them, to the army men, I myself,” he says, “can do nothing…”

And in the freight car there is silence, only the official is breathing.

“Girls, women–eh?”

Silence.

“The women have got to go! Nothing you can do about it,” someone says gloomily. “Bread, bread we're carrying!”

And again silence.

“What then, Manyush–let's go…” –the voice sounds like a snapped string.

Out of the freight cars, in the darkness, into the snow, watchfully crawl the women, and behind them the doors are hurriedly bolted. The women silently, without words, gather in a group. They wait. Wires are humming somewhere closeby. Someone approaches, stares, speaks in a whisper:

“Have you assembled–everyone?… Let's go… There's nothing you can do… Bread. Lend a hand, women–girls… Whichever girls are virgins–don't you go away, or else… something…”

Then the women stand for a long time by the rear freight car of the food train–until a young lad in an unbelted soldier's blouse comes running:

“Ah, women! Been patient long enough?! We need some women–it's a high priority. –And is this the whole herd of you? Look–there's no need for so many–look you've taken a fancy to! Girls, pick out a dozen, the ones that are prettiest. And–be sure they're healthy–mind!”

Night. Falling, falling snow. Wires hum. The wind hums. The lights from the campfires shimmer. Night.

In the office near the duty man crowd the officials and, changing the voice to some absurd-sweet and foul-squeaky one, vying with each other, backing away, they treat the duty man–with little melons, alcohol, brandy, cigarettes, tobacco, calico, thick woolen cloth, tea… The duty man, to speed the night on, tells dirty jokes in field-marshal fashion, and the officials absurdly-sweetly laugh, in embarrassment lowering their eyes.

At dawn train No. 57 mixed whistles, moves away, like vertebrae from the spinal column, and–leaves “Mar loop-station.”

Bread!..

Behind the siding in the steppe lies the burial mound after which the loop-station is named. Once a man had been killed near the burial mound, and on the gravestone somebody etched out in clumsy letters:

“
I was what you are
–

But you will be what I am
.”

The boundless steppe, the burial mound, are all buried under snow, and of the inscription on the gravestone only two words remain:

“
I was
…”

In autumn in the evening near the hill in the town of Ordinin the campfires flare up: this will be the hungry folk heating their soup, those folk who wend their way in their thousands into the steppe for bread, and from the bottom of the hill sad songs float up. That night, Andrei Volkovich:–the stones of the embankment showered down, flew together with him down the ravine (the wind of fall whispered–
gviuu
), and everything crumbled like sparks of eyes from the fall–and then remained only the heart. The vigilante above shouted something, and then the campfires of the hungry, the sleepers, a snatch of a song of the hungry folk.

“Now then. One question–in Dostoevsky fashion–a
little question:
–that duty man from “Mar loop-station”–was he not Andrei Volkovich or Gleb Ordinin?–And another way:–Gleb Ordinin and Andrei Volkovich–were they not that man, who was burning with the last flush of consumption?–our such Russian Ivanushka the Fools, Ivanushka the Tsareviches?”

Dark is this third part of the triptych!

–In Semyon Matveev Zilotov's book–in the book “Intelligent existence, or a moral view of the value of life” there is the sentence:

“
Is there anything more terrible than to see lack of faith strengthening at the very moment when the powers of nature are sick from exhaustion, in order to look with revulsion on the terrors surrounding the beds of the dying, and proudly bequeath to the universe an example of daring and impiety
.”

CHAPTER SIX

AND PENULTIMATE. THE BOLSHEVIKS
(
Second Triptych
)

For the last shall be first

LEATHER JACKETS

I
N THE HOUSE OF THE
Ordinins, in the committee room (there were no geraniums on the windows here)–people in leather jackets had gathered upstairs, Bolsheviks. Here they are, in leather jackets all the same size, each one a leather beau, each one strong, and curls in a ring under a cap on the back of the head, each one has protruding cheekbones, lines around the lips, the movements of each are smooth. Of the Russian crumbly, rough nation–a choice group. In leather jackets–you won't wet them. This is what we know, this is what we want, this is what we have stated–that's all there is to it. Peter Oreshin, the poet, told the truth:–“It's either–freedom to the poor, or–in a field on a pole!..” Arkhip Arkhipov in the daytime would sit in the committee room, write papers, then rush around the town and the factory–to conferences, to gatherings, to meetings. He wrote papers, bunching up his eyebrows (and his beard was a little disheveled), he held his pen like an ax. At gatherings he used foreign words, he would articulate thus:–konstantirovat', enegrichno, litephogramma, fuktsirovat', buzhdet,
*
–the Russian word
mogut
–he articulated–
magut'.
**
In a leather jacket, with a beard like Pugachov's.–Is that funny?–there's funnier to come: Arkhip Arkhipov used to wake up with the dawn and quietly away from everyone:–he studied books, Kiselyov's
Algebra,
Kistyakovsky's economic geography, a history of fourteenth-century Russia (published by Granat), Marx's
Das Kapital,
Ozerov's
Financial Science,
Weitsmann's
Bookkeeping,
a teach-yourself German textbook–and he also studied a small dictionary of foreign words which had come into Russian, compiled by Gavkin.

Leather jackets.

Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks?–Yes. So–that's what Bolsheviks are like!

The Whites went away in March. And in the very first days of March an expedition arrived from Moscow to ascertain what remained of the factories after the Whites and the artillery fire. In the expedition there were spokesmen of–the OTK, and KhMU and the department of metals, and GOMZY, and TsPT and TsPKP and the Industrial Bureau, and RKI and VTsK and so on and so forth, all specialists–at a gathering in a regional town it was established, like twice two, that the factories' position was worse than catastrophic, that there was neither raw materials nor equipment, nor workhands, nor fuel–and that it was
impossible
to start up factories.
Impossible
. I, the author, took part in this expedition, the leader of the expedition was Ts-Kh K, whose patronymic was Lukich. When the order was passed along the train to get ready for the arrival (and we were like a rifle brigade on the train) I, the author, thought that we would be returning to Moscow, since
it was impossible to do anything.
But we set off–to the factories,
for there is nothing that cannot be done
–for it was not possible to do nothing. We set off, because the non-specialist Bolshevik K., Lukich, very simply reasoned that if it were done, there would be no need to do it, and hands–will accomplish anything.

Bolsheviks.

Leather jackets.

“Fuction enegetically.” That's what Bolsheviks are. And–devil take the lot of you–do you hear, bittersweet lemonade!?

Mine No. 3, at the Taezhevsky factory. At a depth of 320, i.e., three-quarters of a verst underground, they were blasting blast-holes: the drillers drilled, up to the waist in water, like boiling water–in the shaft of a seam they drilled blast-holes; the blasters loaded the blast-holes with dynamite and blasted the blast-holes at a depth of 320, in water, like boiling water, up to the chest. The blasters had to grope about in the water for the bore-hole, dive down and cram in the cartridges, place under the cartridge a fulminate of mercury and a gutta-percha fuse–light these cartridges, fifteen, twenty.

Signal upwards:

“Ready?”

Signal downwards:

“Ready.”

Signal upwards:

“I'm firing!”

Signal downwards:

“Fire away!”

One after another the fuses flare up, one after another little blue flames hiss and whistle above the water and dive into a gutta-percha tube under the water. The last blue flame whistled and dived.–

A leap into a tub, a signal upwards:

“Roll!”

“O.K.!”

And the tub rushes upwards in the rain, in the darkness with a whistle, seven sazhens per second (the limit, if no one's to die), away from death, to the light. And below the dynamite roars:–the first, the second, the third.

Mine No. 3, depth 320, two men blasted blast-holes.

“Ready?”

“Ready!”

“I'm firing!”

“Fire away!”

One finished firing earlier, clambered into the tub. The second one lit the blast fuse (blue flames began to hiss, began to dive), he grabbed onto the cable.

“Let her roll!”

Either because the second one stumbled, or because the machine operator was too fast–in the rain, in the darkness, with a whistle, the tub soared up–the second man remained below, and the last flame dived into the water.

And the first one tapped out the signal upwards:

“Stop! Roll it down!”

The tub began to toss about in the darkness, it was suspended in the rain.

“Roll it down!”

And then the second tapped out the signal:

“Roll it up!” –Why have a second death?

“Roll it down!” –this was the first one.

“Roll it up!” –this was the second one.

And the tub began to toss about in the darkness. Each one sacrificed his life–for a brother, just here, at a depth of 320 where death and burial are simultaneous.

The machine operator must have realized what was going on in the mine. With the speed of death the mechanic threw the tub down, and with the speed of death the mechanic brought the tub out–to the rumble of the dynamite below, in death. And above–all three, the mechanic and the blasters, the first and second:–wanted–to drink! And so, because there was then no revolution–why was one to “fuction enegetically.”

Leather jackets. Bolsheviks.

In the house of the Ordinins, in the evening, in the hostel, having taken off his shoes and sweetly kneaded his fingers with his hands after his boots, having placed himself near the small lamp somehow on all fours, Yegor Sobachkin spent a long time reading a pamphlet and turned to his neighbor, who was rooting through
Izvestia.

“And what'cha think, Comrade Makarov, is human life determined by existence or by ideas? Or can't we think there's existence in ideas too?”

CHINA-TOWN

At night in Moscow, in China-town, behind the Chinese wall, in the stone back streets, in the spaces between the gates and the ground, in the gas lamps–a stone desert. In the day China-town behind the Chinese wall seethes with a million people, in bowler hats and with all sorts of millions of things, capitals, estimates, sufferings, lives–all in a bowler hat, never ending Europe with a briefcase. But at night from the stone back streets and from the town houses the bowler hats vanished, depopulation and silence have come, the dogs roamed about, and dimly shone the streetlamps among the stones, and from Zaradye and into Zaradye walked people, infrequent, like dogs. And then in this desert there crawled out of the town houses, out of the spaces between the gates and the ground–that: China without a bowler hat, the Heavenly Kingdom which lies somewhere to the east beyond the Great Stone Wall and looks at the world with slanting eyes that look like the buttons of Russian soldiers' greatcoats. This is one China-town.

And the second.

In Nizhny-Novgorod, in Kanavino, behind Makarye, where the same daytime Moscow Ilinka spreads like a huge arse along Makarye, in November after the September millions of poods, barrels, items, arshins, quarters of goods, converted into roubles, francs, marks, sterling and so on–after the October debauchery at its climax, having poured out in a Volga of wines, caviar, “Venetian,” “European,” “Tartar,” “Chinese” and in liters of spermatozoa–in November in Kanavino, in the snow, out of the nailed-up stalls, from depopulation, looked with soldiers' buttons instead of eyes–that: nocturnal, muscovite and hidden-behind-the-stone-wall China. Silence. Inscrutability. Without a bowler hat. Soldiers' buttons instead of eyes.

The former–muscovite–at nights, from evening till morning. The latter–in winter, from November to March. In March the Volga waters will flood Kanavino and will carry China down to the Caspian.

And the third China-town.

There. A hollow, pines, snow, further on–stone mountains, a leaden sky, a leaden wind. The snow is soft, and for the third day running the winds blow:–the sign knows that the wind eats the snow. March. The chimneys do not smoke. The blast furnace is silent. The, workshops are silent, in the workshops there is snow and rust. Steel silence. And out from the sooty workshops, out from the dead machines in rust–looks: China, sneers, the way soldiers' buttons can sneer. Silent are the milling machines and the Ajax-Wyatt furnaces. The hydraulic press does not groan with its–Nach-evak! Nach-evak–In the rolling mill, on the rusty pig, lies the ruddy snow–broken glass above. The turbine room does not burn at nights, in the boiler house the wind and darkness whistle. From the foundry, where a corner of the furnace was blown away by a shell, from the cold furnaces–soldiers' buttons, big-eared, without a bowler hat, look out, steadily.

“There, a thousand versts away–in Moscow, the huge millstone of war and revolution has ground the Ilinka, and China has crawled out of the Ilinka, begun to crawl…– –”

“Where to?”

“It's crawled to Taezhevo?!”

“You're ly-ing! Ly-i-ing! Ly-y-y-ing!”

–The Whites went away in March and in the factory it felt like March.

The Whites went away with the artillery fire, all scattered through the forest in fear of the white plague, only the Red Army, in tattered greatcoats, in tiny groups–and in their thousands–pushed and pushed ahead. A long time after the Whites, in the machine and assembly shop in the wind, a man hung from a crane, chained by the sides, and in the mines the water came up to the throat, and blue corpses floated by. The March wind roared with snowstorms and ate the snow, out of the March snow, in the gullies around the factory and in the forests around–out of the snow, eaten by the wind–human arms, legs, backs jutted–eaten no longer by the wind, but by dogs and wolves. In the March wind–orphanly in essence–the machine-guns rattled, and, like an old man swatting flies on the walls with a swatter, the cannons oohed…

“Crawled to Taezhevo?

“You're ly-ing! L-y-ing! Ly-y-y-ing!”

Without fools. –The factory came back to life surprisingly quickly, by dint of
economic necessity.
The Whites went away, and out of the forests after the fear the workers began to reassemble, and the workers
had nothing to eat.
That's all there is to it. Power charged hands eight times–the one mother remaining to the workers was–the machine. In the factory there were no bosses–the workers cooperated as a unit. In the factory there was no fuel, the mines were flooded: behind the factory was the Ordinins' stud farm, under the hippodrome lay the layers of coal–they began digging here for coal without a warrant, there was no time to coke, and the cast–iron smelting was done with
anthracite
. The machines were fouled up–first they set up the toolroom. There were no estimates of the money with which to pay the workers–and they decided to release to each worker and skilled worker one pood of pig–iron per month to make ploughs, axes, scythes–for
barter
. The factory–renewed itself,
came back to life
. –Is this not a poem, a hundred times more majestic than the resurrection of Lazarus?! Arkhip Arkhipov and a certain engineer, tousled, in a sheepskin coat and “three–eared” cap, with speech like this
–ta-ra-ram
(revolution–
ta-ra-ram
, scandal
ta-ra-ram
, the Whites have come
ta-ra-ram
, my teeth ache
ta-ra-ram
, eight governments have changed–eight tararams: the first tararam, the second, the third…)–Arkhip Arkhipov and this engineer rushed around the factory, into the shops, to the mines, and in the office in the evening wrote out a
most grandiose
project–they were working out the calibers and clearances for normalization. The black smoke of the furnace wafted in the wind, and at nights the blast furnace flared up at priming. From the workshops came the gnashing of iron, the steel silence died. –They cain “fuction enegetically!”

According to the list of working factories which was available to the expedition dispatched to familiarize itself with our heavy industry, Taezhevo was not mentioned. The expedition called in on Taezhevo by chance–it was driving past at night, it did not intend stopping and saw the blazing blast furnace, and it stopped, and found Taezhevo–one of the only ones…

–There, a thousand versts away, in Moscow, the huge millstone of Revolution had ground the Ilinka, and China has crawled out of the Ilinka, begun to crawl…

“Where to?!”

“It's crawled as far as Taezhevo?!”

“You're lying! Ly–ing! Ly–y–y–ing!”

In the daytime in Moscow, in China–town, a bowler hat juggled, in a tail coat and with a briefcase–and at night it was replaced by: China, the Heavenly Kingdom, which lies beyond the Great Stone Wall, without a bowler hat, with buttons of eyes.–So what then–surely China will not be replaced for a bowler hat in a tail coat and with a briefcase?!–will not the third one come in turn, the one that–

cain enegetically fuction!

Snowstorm. March. –Ahh, what a snowstorm, when the wind eats the snow! Shoyaa, Shoy-oyaa, Shoooyaaa! Gviiu… gu-vu-zz! Gu-vu-zz!… Gla-vbum! Gla-vbum! Shooyaa, Gviiuu, Gaauu! Glav-bum!! Gu-vuz!! Ahh, what a snowstorm! How snowstormy!… How–g-o-o-d!