From time to time he went down into the hold and checked to make sure the precious cargo was still in place, but somewhere around Gotland the weather changed – after a not-too-violent storm the wind dropped. The air hovered over the sea, forming a great block of atmospheric amber out of August’s final heat. The sails slumped, and this went on for several days. The captain, in order to occupy people somehow, ordered them to roll and unroll the halyards, scrub the deck, and in the evenings he made them go through drills. After dark, his authority lost its outlines somewhat, and he snuck back into the cozy cocoon of his cabin, partly of wariness towards these gruff, primitive sailors, partly on account of his travel journal, which he was writing for his two sons.
On the eighth day of dead calm the sailors began to be stormy themselves, and the vegetables they’d bought in Amsterdam, especially the onion, turned out to be poor quality and in large part mouldy. Their supply of vodka was already running out – the captain was actually afraid to look under the deck, where they kept the barrels, but the reports of his first officer certainly did not bode well. The captain felt uneasy as nocturnal clattering on deck reached his ears. At first they were individual steps. But then it was several pairs of legs knocking, and in the end he heard a peaceable trot and a rhythmic shouting (could they be dancing?), which finally transitioned into raucous drunken shouts and uneven choruses sung so pathetically and painfully that it reminded him of the wailing of some marine animals. This happened over several long nights, almost until dawn. By day he saw the sailors’ puffy eyes and swollen eyelids and their gazes that avoided him. But both he and his first officer agreed that deepest darkness at stilled sea would hardly favour any behavioural correctives. It wasn’t until the tenth day of silence, when the nocturnal excesses could no longer be tolerated, that he went out onto the deck, in full sun so that his epaulettes and insignia could be seen, and arrested the ringleader, a man by the name of Kalukin.
Unfortunately, with a trembling heart, he confirmed his suspicions that some of the cargo had been damaged. Some dozen or so of the hundreds of jars they were transporting had been opened, and their liquid contents, a strong brandy, drunk till the last drop. The specimens themselves were still there, lying around on the floor, submerged in tow and sawdust. He didn’t take too close a look at them, out of disgust and fear. The next night he made some men stand with arms in hand to guard the entrance to the hold; a mutiny was close to breaking out. The August heat was driving the men crazy. And the smoothness of the surface of the sea. And the cargo itself.
In the end there was no other way – the captain had the remains that were left sewn up in a cloth bag and he personally threw them overboard. And as though at the touch of a wizard’s wand, the sea, mollified by this morsel, smacked and moved. Somewhere near the Swedish mainland the wind came in and pushed the Tsar’s sailboat towards home.
When they got back to Petersburg the captain had to write a secret report. Kalukin was convicted and hanged, and the collection itself, though incomplete, was transferred safely to rooms prepared expressly for it.
The captain, meanwhile, for his failure to take care of the transport, was sent along with his family to the Far North, where for the rest of his life he organized little fishing expeditions and contributed to the drawing up of more detailed maps of Novaya Zemlya.
IRKUTSK-MOSCOW
Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8 a.m. and lands in Moscow at the same time – at eight o’clock in the morning on that same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself.
So there should be time enough for confessions of whole lifetimes. Time elapses inside the plane but doesn’t trickle out of it.
DARK MATTER
In the third hour of the flight, when the man sitting next to me came back from the bathroom and I had to get up to let him in again, we exchanged a few polite remarks on the weather, the turbulence and the food. During the fourth hour of the flight, however, we introduced ourselves. He was a physicist. He was returning home after giving a series of lectures. When he took off his shoes, I noticed he had an enormous hole in the heel of his sock. Thus I became aware of the physical presence of the physicist, and from that point forward we spoke in a more ordinary way. He told me stories about whales with great enthusiasm, although his work dealt with something else.
Dark matter – that was what he worked on. It’s a thing which we know exists, but without being able to access it, with any instruments. The evidence of its existence arises out of complicated calculations, mathematical results. All signs point to it occupying some three-quarters of the universe. Our matter, clear matter, the matter with which we are familiar and which comprises our cosmos, is inordinately scarcer. Dark matter, meanwhile, is located everywhere, says this man in the sock with the hole in it – right here, all around us. He gazes out the window, indicating with his eyes the blindingly bright clouds beneath us: ‘It’s out there, too. Everywhere. The worst part is we don’t know what it is. Or why.’ I wanted to immediately put him in touch with those climatologists who were flying to their conference in Montreal. I got up and glanced around for them, but then right away I realized, of course, that that was not this flight.
MOBILITY IS REALITY
At the airport, a big ad on a glass wall all-knowingly asserts:
МОБИЛЬНОСТЬ СТАНОВИТСЯ РЕАЛЬНОСTЮ.
Mobility is reality.
Let us stress that it is merely an ad for mobile phones.
FLIGHTS
Over the world at night hell rises. The first thing that happens is it disfigures space; it makes everything more cramped and more massive and unscaleable. Details disappear and objects lose their features, becoming squat and indistinct; how strange that by day they may be spoken of as ‘beautiful’ or ‘useful’; now they look like shapeless bodies: hard to guess what they’d be for. Everything is hypothetical in hell. All that daytime heterogeneity of form, the presence of colours, shades, reveals itself to be utterly in vain – what purpose could possibly be served by beige upholstery, by floral wallpaper, by tassels? What difference does green make to a dress slung over the back of a chair? It’s difficult to understand the covetous gaze that fell upon it as it clung to its hanger in the shop window. There are no buttons or hooks or clasps now; fingers in the dark find only vague bulges, rough patches, lumps of hard matter.
The next thing hell does is drag you out of sleep. You can kick and scream; hell is implacable. Sometimes it provides disturbing images, frightening or mocking – a decapitated head, a beloved body covered in blood, human bones in ashes – yes, yes, hell likes to shock. But more often than not it awakes without standing on ceremony – your eyes open onto darkness, launching a stream of consciousness; your gaze, aimed at nothing, is its advance guard. The nocturnal brain is a Penelope unravelling the cloth of meaning diligently woven during the day. Sometimes it’s a single thread, sometimes more; complex designs break down into prime factors – warp and weft; weft falls by the wayside, and only straight parallel lines remain, the barcode of the world.