Monumental Propaganda (37 page)

93

For the October holidays the communists in Moscow were planning a massive street demonstration. They were gathering together their adherents from all over the country who had nothing else to do, and one of them was Aglaya. She went, despite the fact that the holidays coincided with the local elections. As the elections approached, all the polls had put the communists in first place, and she naturally wanted to witness their victory.

But she couldn't miss the demonstration either.

“Go,” Zherdyk told her. “You go, and we'll wage the struggle for you down here as well.”

He gave her the money for an open-compartment ticket.

The train was packed with refugees, Russians from the Caucasian republics. They were not a very attractive crowd; they smelled bad and aroused as much disgust as pity. They were carrying with them everything that was left after the pillaging and extortion, and they had heaped up their suitcases, bundles, cardboard boxes and plastic bags tied around with sticky tape on all the upper bunks and on the floor between the bunks and the corridor.

Aglaya's bunk was the top one along the wall of the carriage, and the soldier who was traveling below her refused to swap for anything. For a long time he gave no reply to her attempts to appeal to his conscience, and then he explained to Aglaya in a whisper, but without any great embarrassment, that he was going into hospital for the treatment of incontinence.

“If anything happens during the night, Granny, it'll be the worse for you.”

He helped her to clamber up onto the bunk, and she settled herself, lying on her back, but she fought against sleep, afraid of falling off the bunk in the night.

Despite the soldier's apprehensions, everything passed off without any embarrassing incidents, but she spent a restless night. It was hot in the open-plan carriage, but there were wandering drafts. The window in the next section didn't close. They'd covered it with plywood, but not tightly enough to keep the wind out, and it was especially strong when anyone opened the door to the vestibule on their way to the toilet or the next carriage. And apart from that, it was noisy. Children crying, old men snoring, someone groaning and a little distance away four men playing a furious game of cards and swearing venomously at each other for any bad leads.

After midnight the carriage became quiet, but at about two o'clock there was a sudden commotion: someone had been robbed in the firstclass sleeping carriage. The victim had earlier noticed two Caucasians standing beside his compartment, and now the captain of the train, a policeman and the victim himself were waking up men who were sleeping, turning them over and shining a flashlight in their faces, and the captain of the train kept asking the victim: “This one? This one?” The roused men grumbled and muttered, asking why on earth they were being woken up, but as people without any rights, they expressed their indignation timidly and uncertainly. Naturally, the thieves were not discovered, because they were being sought in the wrong place. Divanich had once told Aglaya that thieves in railway carriages always worked in collusion with the conductors and the captain of the train was in on it too, so if there was a scandal he deliberately organized a raid where nothing would be found.

94

At Savyolovskya Station she was met by a man in a thick padded coat, a peaked leather cap and tall boots. He was at least fifty years old, but he introduced himself familiarly as Mitya. Aglaya had the idea that she'd seen him somewhere before. Mitya led her off on foot to somewhere close by—he said they were going to the Marina Roshcha district. It was cold and windy and there was a fine drizzle falling, running down people's cheeks and turning to ice on the asphalt. Aglaya's knees were hurting, her head was full of cotton wool and her throat was feeling sore. Her feet slid apart on the wet pavement, and she was afraid of falling. She couldn't keep up with her guide, and every now and then she stopped and Mitya hopped from one foot to the other as he waited patiently, smoking and wiping his face with a coarse palm.

Eventually, they reached a three-story brick building and a green metal door bearing the modest notice KNIGHT INC. BOOK DEPOT. They walked up jagged brick steps to a landing, then walked down more of the same kind of steps into a semibasement, across a floor of crookedly laid bricks to another door, also metal, beyond which they found a large open space generously illuminated by daylight lamps. There were no indications of any book depot; it looked more like a canteen or perhaps a lecture hall: several rows of long green tables with synthetic tops and plastic garden chairs. On the wall opposite the entrance there was a blackboard with a list of names written on it in chalk. There was also a large sheet of paper with a picture of a target pinned to the board.

Standing on the table to the right of the entrance in front of a redheaded girl wearing jeans and a crimson jumper was a folded piece of card with the words DELEGATE REGISTRATION. Mitya gave Aglaya's name and initials as a new arrival, the girl noted it all down in a register and asked what organization she was from. “From Zherdyk in Dolgov,” Mitya answered. Beside the redhead a blond man of the same age wearing a baseball jacket was selling books. The most prominent spot was occupied by a book by the Party's leader, Alfred Glukhov, entitled simply and modestly
Marching Together,
an expensive edition in a colorful binding with numerous color photographs, each protected by tracing paper. Everything here was jumbled up together:
Das Kapital
by Karl Marx,
Report with a
Noose Around My Neck
by the long-forgotten Julius Fuchik, two tattered volumes of Lenin, the stories of Victoria Tokareva, dictionaries, the manual
Windows 95 for Dummies,
a brochure called
Learn Sharpshooting,
detective novels and books about sport. And then Aglaya spotted Mark Shubkin's book
The Timber Camp.
She turned the book over in her hands, noticed that it was a new edition amended by the author and decided to buy it.

Beside the counter two young artists were crawling around on a sheet of Whatman paper laid out on the floor, drawing caricatures of the president in a dunce's cap sitting on a throne with an idiotic expression on his face. On each side of the president an obsequiously bowed, hook-nosed oligarch was whispering something in his ear, and the oligarchs were being prompted in turn by the prime minister of Israel and the president of the United States. There were several people standing over the artists and looking at their work, laughing and exchanging spiteful comments.

There were already quite a lot of people in the hall who had arrived before Aglaya. Most of them were elderly people from out of town, with suitcases, kit bags and bundles at their feet. Many of them were drinking tea, to which they helped themselves from a nickel-plated electric samovar. Two Cossacks in long cavalry greatcoats with shoulder straps bearing insignia unfamiliar to Aglaya, wearing tall fur hats and with sabers at their sides, were dozing sitting face-to-face. One of the Cossacks was wearing decorations of some order that Aglaya didn't recognize pinned on the front of his greatcoat—crosses that looked as though they'd been cut out of tin cans or cast from tin in a village stove.

In the corner, under a copy of the painting
Stalin at the Demonstration in Baku,
sat a man whom Aglaya had recently seen on the television. He was a famous writer who had come from abroad, and until recently he'd been regarded as a rabid anti-Communist. Now he had repented. Being of a very high opinion of his own works, he was sure that they were the only reason the Soviet regime had collapsed. But one look at the forces that had now assumed power had been enough to make him feel ashamed of his former books, statements and actions, regret that he had destroyed the Soviet regime, and promise in his penitence to set the old order back on its feet with his new writings.

The writer was not sitting alone; he was with an old man wearing an unbuttoned general's greatcoat, with three stars on his shoulder straps. Aglaya recognized him as Fyodor Fyodorovich Burdalakov, the same man with whom she had once had a brief holiday romance. How could she fail to recognize him, when he had been shown so many times on television as one of the main instigators of various communist events? But how he had changed! That winter when they used to run along the seashore in Sochi, he was still a robust man with a broad, strong back and muscular legs, but what she saw now was a decrepit, feeble grandfather with sparse, disheveled gray hair protruding untidily in all directions and a short-trimmed gray mustache. Gleaming brightly under Fyodor Fyodorovich's open greatcoat were two golden stars of a Hero of the Soviet Union (he had been awarded the second for length of service). He had his medal ribbons on the left side of his chest and two orders on the right side. There was something that looked like an umbrella in a silk case leaning up against the table beside the general. Aglaya recognized the stick and the case.

“Hello, Fyodor Fyodorovich,” she said, approaching the general.

He lifted his head to look at her, mumbled a brisk “ 'lo” and turned back to the writer. But then he immediately swung back and asked uncertainly: “Aglaya Stepanovna? Glasha?” He jumped to his feet, at the same time clutching at his waist. “Well I never! Look at that! Fancy seeing you! You haven't changed a bit.”

“Oh haven't I!” said Aglaya, rejecting the compliment. “I'm an old woman.”

“Oh no, don't say that!” said Fyodor Fyodorovich, refusing to concede. “The gray hair ages you a little, of course, but with a touch of color . . .”

Fyodor Fyodorovich apologized to the writer and switched all of his attention to Aglaya, and the writer immediately began to sulk and pulled a sour face. He always took offense at anyone who didn't regard him as the center of attention. He sat there beside them for a while feeling bored, then went off to find someone he could tell about his historical guilt before the Soviet people and the means for making restitution.

Aglaya and Fyodor Fyodorovich talked about this and that, reminisced about Sochi. Fyodor Fyodorovich asked why she had gone away so suddenly that time. She said: “I just did.”

“And can you imagine,” said Fyodor Fyodorovich, “there I was just back . . . And not empty-handed either, by the way. I bought you a watch”—he hesitated for a moment—“a gold one. And perfume”—he exaggerated again—“French it was. So there I am knocking at the door, the door opens and who do you think is standing there in person? Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov. Just imagine it . . . Molotov himself . . .”

They spoke of their age and their ailments. Aglaya told the general what an uncomfortable journey she'd had in the heat and the draft, and now it felt like she'd caught a cold—her throat was sore, her chest was clogged up and her back was aching. Fyodor Fyodorovich promptly set about trying to cure her with hot tea with sugar and lemon. Over tea they began swapping recipes for mixtures and infusions from folk healers, but before they got on to the liniments and rubs, there was a slight commotion in the hall. The door opened, and a number of powerfully built young men with expressionless faces, all wearing identically distended jackets, entered in menacing silence and immediately took up positions around the walls. Following them, appearing out of nowhere, came a stout man of about fifty with a gray, lumpy face and two warts on his nose. Aglaya, of course, immediately recognized him as the leader of the Party, Alfred Glukhov—how could she fail to, when she saw him every day on every TV channel? The leader's appearance was greeted with disorderly uproar: people began clattering their chairs on the floor, banging on chair backs and clapping their hands. Fyodor Fyodorovich rose to his feet with the others, but the leader immediately ran over to him and pushed him back down onto his chair with both hands, saying: “Please, please, Fyodor Fyodorovich, no need for that. Anyway, my rank doesn't merit it; you're a general and I'm only a senior lieutenant.” To which Fyodor Fyodorovich replied humbly, with no small hint of flattery: “Today a senior lieutenant, tomorrow the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.”

“Well, perhaps,” the leader replied modestly, but without attempting to reject the prospective assignment. “If we have to, we'll take power. Certainly we will. The bottom line is that we have a historical responsibility, and no one has relieved us of it. Are you also a member of the Party?” he asked, turning to Aglaya.

“Yes, and what a member she is!” Fyodor Fyodorovich responded enthusiastically.

And he immediately informed the leader that Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina, a communist since before the war, had been a district Party committee secretary and commanded a partisan unit . . .

“Oho!” the leader interrupted him. “Very pleased to meet you.”

She had expected to feel a firm comradely handshake, but the leader's hand proved to be as flabby and soft as a sponge, and it was sweaty as well, which made an unpleasant impression on Aglaya. From socialist-realist works of literature she knew sweaty hands and shifty eyes were signs of a very bad person who was not one of us. Our people looked you straight in the eye and shook your hand firmly with a dry palm. But it was no more than a fleeting feeling that disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. Especially when the leader noticed Aglaya's feverish eyes and asked whether she had a cold. Which endeared him to her greatly. A man like that, who had taken on such a weight of responsibility, who had dealings with so many people, and he still had time to notice that she looked unwell. Aglaya was about to say, “Never mind, it's nothing serious,” but at that precise moment she began sneezing and coughing painfully. Fyodor Fyodorovich took the opportunity to tell the leader he'd like a quick word with him about something.

“What's the
problème
?” the leader asked quickly.

“The problem is,” Fyodor Fyodorovich explained, “that here we have an old woman who had to travel on the side bunk in a carriage with a broken window.”

The leader listened with a frown.

“There,” he said, “see to what a state an antipopular administration and a drunken president have reduced the country. A distinguished veteran, a war hero, a woman, and she has to travel in conditions like that.

“Don't you worry,” he said to Aglaya, “just endure it a little while longer and you'll travel back in comfort, I promise you.”

With these words he clapped his hands and said quietly: “Mitya!” Mitya promptly popped up like a genie out of a bottle.

“Here, Mitya, deal with this,” said the leader in a low voice. “A ticket home for Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina in a first-class sleeping compartment. Understand? Not an open carriage and not second class, but a firstclass sleeping compartment.” And as he slowly moved away, he repeated it so that other people noticed, “Don't forget! First-class car, not second class.”

After he left Aglaya, he began moving rapidly around the hall in a seemingly haphazard pattern, but actually zigzagging his way toward the exit, squeezing people's hands, asking what the
problème
was, swapping phrases, slogans, jokes and interjections. And he wriggled his way out as imperceptibly as he had entered . . .