The Naked Year (9 page)

“The horses are feeding peacefully. It's damp–the gadflies aren't bothering them. Let's go, I'll ferry you across in the boat. What a mist! Sometimes I feel like walking–walking, walking–into the mist!”

Andrei talked a lot with Anna in that gloomy dawn. Anna had a husband, an engineer at the factory, everything it was necessary to overcome, there in town with her husband, was overcome, made obsolete, unnecessary. And Andrei knew that in that June dawn Anna was weeping. One must live. Her husband would never understand that there is a Russia with her Time of Troubles, Razinovshchina and Pugachovshchina, with ‘17, the old churches, the ikons, folk tales, ceremonies, Juliana Lazarevskaya and Andrei Rublyov, with her woods and steppes, marshes and rivers, water-sprites and goblins. He would never understand freedom from everything–having nothing, giving up everything, like Andrei, not having any underwear to call one's own. Let the trains in Russia come to a halt–surely there's beauty in a burning torch, hunger, sickness? One must learn to look at everything and at oneself from without, to simply look, not to belong to anyone. To keep moving, moving, to overcome joy and suffering.

It was haymaking time, the harvest time. There was almost no nighttime, at night it seemed that there was no sky over the river in flood, the creeks, the dry valleys and woods–and over Uvek. When Andrei came first to the commune, they shouted out to him:

“Who goes there?!”

And grandfather Yegorka answered with the password:

“Come on!”

The road from the gates with the lions, under the hill, passed by the stone wall with vases on pillars. Down the hillside went the stone paths to a kitchen garden, the meadow and the river. Behind clumps of trees, behind the green square, behind the stable yard stood a sullen house of classical architecture, along its sides stretched outbuildings and wings. On the porch a snub-nosed machine-gun, a Maxim, looked out from behind the columns. There was nobody in the yard. They went round the house by the path, walked through the thickets of almond bushes and lilacs up to the terrace. In the dining room, at long tables sat the anarchists, who were finishing supper. Grandfather Yegorka pulled a wry face and walked away. The cows had been rounded up, and the women had gone to milk them. Pavlenko went to the night quarters. The hour was already late, but the sky was still green, the mist had begun to crawl over the meadow. Many had gone away to sleep, to get up tomorrow at dawn. Andrei was sitting with comrade Yuzik in the study, with a candle, the walls glistened with the golden bindings of the books. Comrade Yuzik was standing by the window and looking at the sky.

“What a quiet Spring here!” said Yuzik. “And what quiet stars you have–they look so sad. Were you never attwacted by astwonomy?–When you think about the stars, you begin to feel, that we are totally insignificant. The earth–is a wordly pwison; what are we, humans? What do our wevolution and injustice mean?”

Andrei replied quickly:

“Yes, yes! That's what I think, too! One must be free and give up everything. It's remarkable how our thoughts coincide.”

“Yes, of course!…” –Yuzik grew silent. “Nowhere are there stars like those in the Indian Ocean–the Southern Cwoss… I've been all round the world, and nowhere is there a countwy like Wussia. We came here, in order to live on the earth, to cweate life… How nice it is here, and what books are on these shelves, the books have been collected over two centuries!… From the Euwopeans' point of view we Wussians, are living in the Middle Ages.”

In came Pavlenko, Svirid, Natalya, Irina, and Aganka. Aganka had brought a wooden jug of milk and some oatcakes.

“Who wants some?”

In the lounge the candle burned lonely, the golden Empire-style furniture stood in meticulous order, through the arch was the completely empty hall. The windows of the lounge and study were open. Under the slope in the meadow the birds and insects were calling, making noises and singing in their various voices, as in an opera before an overture, when the orchestra is tuning up. Irina lazily played a few bars on the piano, and Aganka got ready to dance. In came Semyon Ivanovich, with a beard like Marx's–with a pile of newspapers and began speaking in irritated tones of the destruction. –On that evening Andrei returned to Nikola and, standing by St. Nikola's once again relived keenly, painfully and tenderly all that joy, his joy which had been created for him by a dream, the Revolution–a dream about the truth of poverty, about justice, about the beauty–of old five-hundred-year-old churches.

With the anarchists Andrei would rise with the dawn–summer-like, immeasurably clear, –and with a pair of barrels on poles he rushed down to the river for water. Aganka helped him to work the pump. After pumping and watering the horses, they bathed, separated by a bush. Andrei carted the water away, first to the kitchen garden and the park, then to the kitchen. The sun came up red and slow, clothing got soaked with the honey dew, from the water-meadows the last puffs of mist moved away. They would knock off work between twelve and three, the men steaming hot, gathered for lunch, bronzed with the sun, sweaty with work, their collars unbuttoned. Never before had Andrei worked with his muscles–his shoulders ached sweetly, and his waist and thighs, his head was light, his thoughts–clear and calm. Calm and clear evenings came, Andrei wanted to sleep, his shoulders ached, and–in insomnia–the world seemed transparent, crystal and fragile, like June dawns. Always in the evenings Comrade Natasha would go walking with Andrei, she would weave daisy chains for herself and for him and, laughing, would talk to Andrei about how quiet he was, like the cornflower. In the evenings the papers were brought, the newspaper reporters wrote about the socialist fatherland being in danger, the Cossacks were in rebellion, the Ukrainians, the Poles–and this seemed unimportant–who would break the glassy backwater of insomnia? His thoughts were clear and light, fractured in the brittle thirst for sleep. And June with its porcelain jasmines, with its crystal sunrises, had already passed.

In the day Andrei worked in the park with Aganka–and admired her. She always had a ready song or tale, he never saw her tired and never knew when she slept. Short, thick-set, barefooted, with a laughing face, she used to wake him at dawn, splashing him with water, having already milked the cows. Like a frog she could swim, shameless, bathing, and then all day she was never still–in the park, in the potato patch, in the kitchen garden. In the evenings she would “get distracted”–at first with Pavlenko, then with Svirid–“ach–whose business is it who I sit with all night?” At haymaking Andrei and Aganka turned hay together in the garden, Andrei would stop for a smoke, Aganka would play with a rake and with her thighs, just like a young horse, she would say mischievously:

“Don't be distracted, Andryusha, get to work!”

“Where are you from, Aganka? When do you sleep, rest?”

“Where everyone's from:–from mother!”

“Don't talk crazy!”

“Hold your tongue, hold your tongue!… Get turning, stop getting distracted!”

And Aganka died in July–over the earth moved black smallpox and typhus… –Death! Sedition, hunger, a taper:–See in order to live. The first days of July, before the intense heat, for five days there were rains and storms, the anarchists were in the house–and Andrei had never known such joy, joy of being alive!

–This is through the eyes of Andrei,

the poetry of Andrei Volkovich.

THROUGH NATALYA'S EYES

Above St. Nicholas's, above Chornye Rechki, above the water-meadows towered a lonely hill, deserted, bald, except for the guelder roses growing on its sides, it stood alone, deserted, high. To the northern skyline the woods bristled like dark saw-edges, and southwards extended the steppes. And the centuries had reserved their own name for it–Uvek.

On the summit of Uvek people had noticed ruins and burial mounds–the archeologist Baudek and the artist Ordinin with a detail of peasants had come to excavate them. The excavations were in their third week and centuries were being brought out of the earth. On Uvek they found the remains of an ancient town, stone ruins of aqua-ducts lay in layers, the foundations of buildings, a sewerage system–hidden by the loamy soil and black earth this had survived not from the Finns, nor the Scythians, nor from the Bulgars–someone unknown came here from the Asiatic steppes in order to found a city and disappear into history–forever. But after them, after those unknown people the Scythians were here, and they left their burial mounds. In the burial mounds, in the stone vaults, in their stone tombs, lay human bones, clothed, disintegrating at the touch, like ash, with jugs and dishes, embellished with horsemen and huntsmen, where once there had been food and drink–with the bones of a horse at their feet, with a saddle, embossed with gold, bonework and stones, and the skin had become mummy-like. In the stone vaults it was deathly, there was no longer a smell of anything, and every time it was necessary to enter them, thoughts became precise and peaceful, and sorrow entered the soul. The summit of Uvek, stony, had grown bald, wormwood had grown on it like a silver, dusty stubble, it gave off a bitter smell. –The centuries.–The centuries teach just as the stars do, and Baudek knew the joy of grief. The archeologist Baudek's concepts were entangled with the centuries. A thing always says more not about life, but about art, and a way of life is already art. Baudek measured life by art, like any artist. And from the centuries and revolution Baudek and Gleb Ordinin wanted to follow these members of the sects who lived in farmsteads in the steppes. And bitter on Uvek was the smell of wormwood.

Here on Uvek the diggers used to wake up at the crack of dawn, boil water in a billy can. They would dig. At midday dinner was brought from the commune. They would rest. Again they would dig, till dusk. Then they lit campfires and sat near them, talking, singing songs… Beyond the river in the village–they ploughed, reaped, ate, drank and slept, to live–just as below the ravine in the commune and in the steppe among the sectarians, where they also labored, ate and slept. And also, besides this, they all sipped and wished to imbibe peace and joy. July was scorching, incinerating the days; as always, the days were transparent and enervating–the nights brought peace and their own nocturnal discord. –Some dug out the earth, the dry loamy soil, mixed with flint and thunderstone, others carted it away in wheelbarrows, sifted it through riddles. They dug down as far as a stone entrance. The vault was dark, there wasn't a smell of anything. The coffin stood on a dais. They lit the lamps. They made sketches. They flashed the magnesium–they took photographs. It was quiet and silent. They removed the lid, which had turned green and weighed ten poods. The others by the ravine on the high point were digging up the remains of some circular edifice, whose stones time had not yet clogged up.

Uvek fell steeply. From Uvek the water-meadows stretched in a deserted expanse, beyond the water-meadows rose like a toothed saw-edge the woods of Chernorechye, Chernorechye: and they told Baudek the rumor of how the deserters had settled in Medin, the Green bandit army, having dug some dugouts, planted little huts, positioned their vigilantes among the bushes, with machine-guns, rifles, ready, if pressed, to go away into the steppes, to rebel, attack the towns.

However, this was through the eyes of the anarchist Natalya.

Late in the evening, returning from the water-meadows, Natalya and Baudek climbed up to the bare summit to the excavations. There was a bitter smell of wormwood, the wormwood grew all over the hill like silver, dusty stubble, it smelled bitter and dry. From the deserted summit was a wide view all around, at the bottom of the hill flowed a river, beyond the river in the mist gleamed the campfires of the last haymakings and night pastures. From the field wafted a dry smell. They stopped to say goodbye–and noticed:–from the gully to the excavations, from the other side, from Nikola, naked women were running, in single file, with broad, unhurried gait, with hair disheveled, with the dark hollows of their pubic regions, with brooms of grass in their hands. The women ran in silence to the excavations, ran around the circular ruin on the high point and turned to the ravine, the gully, raising the wormwood dust.

Baudek began to speak.

“Somewhere there is Europe, Marx, scientific socialism, but here beliefs which are a thousand years old are preserved. The girls run about their land, they cast spells with their bodies and purity. This is the week of Peter sun-gates. Who will invent–Peter sun-gates? This is more beautiful than excavations! Now it is midnight. Perhaps it's they who are casting spells on us. This is a girls' secret.”

Again from the field wafted the dry smell. In the fathomless sky a star fell–the July time of fallings stars was approaching. The grasshoppers rang out dryly and stuffily. There was a bitter smell of wormwood.

They said goodbye. Saying “goodbye,” Baudek seized hold of Natalya's hand, said softly:

“Natalya, rare one, when will you be my wife?”

Natalya answered, after a pause, softly:

“Leave off, Flor.”

Baudek went to the tents. Natalya returned to the ravine by a narrow path, overgrown with guelder roses, went down into the estate, into the commune. Night could not quench the thirst of the scorching day, in the night there was much thirst and scorching heat, like tarnished silver dryly gleamed–the grass, the distances, the water-meadows and the air. Pebbles showered down the flinty path.

By the stable yard lay Svirid, he hummed, looking at the sky:

–Kama, Kama, mother of rivers!..

Beat the faces of the Kolchak!

Kama, Kama, water way!

Beat the faces of the Communists!..

He noticed Natalya, said:

“Now it's night, Comrade Natalya, no chance to fall asleep, how about a cuddle! All the Communists are in the plants. Have you been to the excavators?–they say they're excavating the town–these days everything's being dug up! Yes!”

And again he began to sing:

Kama, Kama, mother of rivers!..

“They've brought newspapers from the station. Strong smell of wormwood here. Country!”

Natalya walked through to the reading room, lit a candle, the dim light was reflected greasily in the faded marble columns. As in the old days there stood bookshelves, gilded armchairs, a round table in the middle, covered with newspapers. She bowed her head, heavy plaits fell down–she read the newspapers. Both the newspapers from the province on brown paper, and the newspapers from Moscow on blue paper made out of chippings–were full of bitterness and confusion. There was no bread. There was no iron. There was hunger, death, lies, horror and terror–it was the year 'nineteen.

In came Semyon Ivanovich, the old revolutionary, with a beard like Marx's, lowered himself into an armchair, lit up a dog-end, nervously.

“Natalya.”

“Yes.”

“I've been in the town. Can you imagine what's going on? There's nothing. In winter everyone will die of hunger and will freeze. There's no salt, without which it's impossible to smelt steel, without steel it's impossible to make saws, there's nothing to saw wood with–in winter the houses will freeze–because of no salt! It's frightening! You can feel how frightening!–What frightening, deaf silence. Just look–death is more natural than birth, than life. All around is death, hunger, scurvy, typhus, smallpox, cholera… The woods and ravines are swarming with bandits. You can hear it–a deathly silence! Death. In the steppes there are villages, which have died out completely. Nobody buries the corpses, and in the darkness at night dogs and deserters roam about… The Russian nation.”

In Natalya's room in the attic, in the corner stood a crucifix with a bunch of grass thrust behind it–this survived from the landowners. The mirror on the pot-bellied mahogany dressing table with ancient indispensable trinkets was discolored and starting to peel. The drawer of the dressing table was open: from there still emanated, in landowners' fashion, the smell of wax, and on the bottom there were scattered multicolored pieces of silk–this was the maids' room under the Ordinins. Little rugs and carpet runners lay about. Through the windows there was a broad view of the water-meadows, the river–one thought that in winter all this vast empty space would be white from the snows. Natalya stood for a long time by the windows, plaiting her hair, let slip her sarafan. She was thinking–about the archeologist Baudek, about Semyon Ivanovich, about herself–about the Revolution–about its misery–about her own misery.

The first to announce the dawn were the martins, they flew about in the yellow dry gloom, chirping. The last bat flew past. At dawn came Irina. She sat down in silence on the window. With the dawn came the bitter smell of wormwood–and Natalya understood: of wormwood, of its fabulous bitter smell, the smell of living and dead water, not only our dry-valley Julys' smell–all our days smell of it, the year nineteen hundred and nineteen. The sadness of the wormwood–is the sadness of our days. But with wormwood the peasant women chase out devils and unclean spirits from their huts. –The Russian nation–she remembered. In April, when they were chasing the Whites, at a small, steppe station, where there were sky, steppe, five poplar trees, rails and a station hut, she noticed three people–two peasants and a child. All three were in bast sandals, the old man in a short fur coat, but the girl half-naked. All three had noses which said definitely that the blood in them was both Chuvash and Tatar. They all had hollow faces. The broad sunset faded. The old man's face resembled a hut, his hair cascaded down like a thatch roof, his near blind eyes looked westward, like thousands of years. In these eyes there was an immeasurable indifference–or, perhaps, the wisdom of centuries, which it is impossible to comprehend. Natalya was thinking then: there is the genuine Russian nation, these here hollow, gray ones, eaten away by filth and sweat, with harrowing faces like huts, with hair like thatched roofs. The old man was looking westward; the other was sitting motionless, having drawn up one leg and put his head on it. The girl was sleeping, sprawled out on the asphalt, expectorated on and bespattered with sunflower peel. They were silent. And it was pitiful and frightening to look at them–at those, by whom and in whose name the Revolution is made. A people without a history–for where is the
history
of the Russian
people?
–a people, who have created their own songs, their own tunes, their own tales… Then these peasants came across the commune by chance, sang, like pilgrims, bowed down, asked for alms, told how they were from “Vladimir,” driven out by hunger, walked ground begging: at home they had left boarded-up huts, had eaten everything, even horses. And Natalya noticed: lice were falling off them. This very station, where she met them for the first time, was called “Mar Junction.”

Outside there was a noise of buckets, women were going to do the milking. The horses had been brought from the night pasture. Semyon Ivanovich, who had not slept that night, was greasing the cart with Svirid, getting ready to go into the water-meadows for hay. The chickens, which had already grown a little, were making a din. Day came, scorching the earth with its heat, when it was necessary to drink its thirst, in order to go in the evening for more wormwood, Baudek's wormwood, for the bitterness of joy, since Natalya had never had this wormwood joy, and these days brought it, when it is necessary to live–now or never.

The sun traveled its scorching sun's path, the day languished in scorching heat, the ring of silence, the distance shimmered in a slight scorching hot shimmer, like melted glass. In the afternoon shift, in the rest period, Natalya came to the excavations, sat with Baudek under the sun, amid the disemboweled earth, on an upturned wheelbarrow. The sun burned, and on the wheelbarrows, on the black earth, on the stones, on the huts, on the grass lay the scorching hot paints, like multicolored pieces of silk.

Natalya spoke about the scorching heat, about the Revolution, about the days: with all her blood she felt, accepted the Revolution, wanted to create it–and today's days brought wormwood, today's days smell of wormwood–she spoke like Semyon Ivanovich. And moreover, because Baudek placed his head on her knees, because the collar of his embroidered shirt was undone, he bared his neck, and there was scorching heat–she smelled another wormwood, about which she was silent. And again she spoke like Semyon Ivanovich.

Baudek was lying on his back, having half covered his gray eyes, held Natalya's hand and, when she was silent in the scorching heat, began to speak:

“Russia, Revolution. Yes. The smell of wormwood–of living or dead water–Yes!… Will everything be extinguished? Are there no ways? And… You remember the Russian fable about the living and the dead water. The fool Ivanushka was ruined completely, he had nothing left, it wasn't even possible for him to die. The fool Ivanushka conquered, because truth was with him, truth fights falsehood, all falsehood will perish. All fables are interwoven with grief, fear and falsehood–and are untangled by truth. Look around–in Russia now there is a fable. The people are creating fairy tales. The people are creating the Revolution; the Revolution began like a fable. Surely hunger is fabulous and death is fabulous? Surely the towns are dying fabulously, going away into the seventeenth century, and the factories are being fabulously reborn? Look around–a fable. There is a smell of wormwood–thus the fable. And with us, with us both is–also a fable, your hands smell of wormwood!”