Then, when their turn comes, the red-faced policman shouts over his shoulder to someone in the other room:
‘It’s that runaway woman.’
The voice from in there answers:
‘That one you can just let go, but write the other one up, for disturbing the peace.’
And to the shrouded woman the policeman says:
‘Next time we’re going to ship you out of town, a hundred kilometres out, got it? We don’t want any cult members around here.’
Meanwhile he takes Annushka’s I.D. from her, and as though he couldn’t read he also has her repeat her first name, patronymic and last name, and her address, he asks for her address. Annushka touches the tabletop with her fingertips and, partially closing her eyes as though reciting a poem, gives him her information. She repeats her address twice:
‘Kuznetskaya 46, apartment 78.’
They release them separately, an hour apart, first the shrouded woman, so by the time Annushka gets out, there is no trace of her. Nothing surprising about that, the cold is horrendous. She meanders around the station, her legs urge her on, would carry her down these broad streets off somewhere to the source of all streets, to where they emerge from the hilly outskirts, and past them, to where new and different vistas open up – of the great plain that plays with its breath. But Annushka’s bus is arriving, she runs up and gets on it just in time.
People are in motion already, the streets overtaken by morning movements even though the sun is not yet out. Annushka’s on the bus for a long time, reaching the city’s edge, and then she’s standing at the base of her apartment block, looking up at her windows, all the way up. They’re still dark, but when the sky starts to get lighter she sees that in the kitchen of her apartment there is a light that switches on, and she heads for the entrance.
WHAT THE SHROUDED RUNAWAY WAS SAYING
Sway, go on, move. That’s the only way to get away from him. He who rules the world has no power over movement and knows that our body in motion is holy, and only then can you escape him, once you’ve taken off. He reigns over all that is still and frozen, everything that’s passive and inert.
So go, sway, walk, run, take flight, because the second you forget and stand still his massive hands will seize you and turn you into just a puppet, you’ll be enveloped in his breath, stinking of smoke and fumes and the big rubbish dumps outside town. He will turn your brightly coloured soul into a tiny flat one, cut out of paper, of newspaper, and he will threaten you with fire, disease and war, he will scare you so you lose your peace of mind and cease to sleep. He will mark you and record you in his records, provide you with the documentation of your fall. He’ll occupy your thoughts with unimportant things, what to buy, and what to sell, where things are cheaper and where they’re more expensive. From then on you will worry over trifles – the price of petrol and how that will affect the payments on our loans. You will live every day in pain, as though your life were a sentence. But for what crime? Committed when and by whom? You’ll never know.
Once, long ago, the Tsar tried to reform the world but he was vanquished, and the world fell right into the hands of the Antichrist. God, the real one, the good one, became an exile from the world, the vessel of divine power shattered, absorbed into the earth, disappearing into its depths. But when he spoke in a whisper from his hiding place, he was heard by one righteous man, a soldier by the name of Yefim, who paid attention to his words. In the night he threw away his rifle, took off his uniform, unwrapped his feet and slid his boots off. He stood under the sky naked, as God had made him, and then he ran into the forest, and donning an overcoat he wandered from village to village, preaching the gloomy news. Flee, get out of your homes, go, run away, for only thus will you avoid the traps of the Antichrist. Any open battle with him will be lost outright. Leave whatever you possess, give up your land and get on the road.
For anything that has a stable place in this world – every country, church, every human government, everything that has preserved a form in this hell – is at his command. Everything that is defined, that spans from here to there, that fits into a framework, is written down in registers, numbered, testified to, sworn to; everything collected, displayed, labelled. Everything that holds: houses, chairs, beds, families, earth, sowing, planting, verifying growth. Planning, awaiting the results, outlining schedules, protecting order. Rear your children thus, since you had them without understanding, and set out on the road; bury your parents, who brought you into this world without understanding – and go. Get out of here, go far away, beyond the reach of his breath, beyond his cables and wires and antennas and waves, resist the measurements of his sensitive instruments.
Whoever pauses will be petrified, whoever stops, pinned like an insect, his heart pierced by a wooden needle, his hands and feet drilled through and pinned into the threshold and the ceiling.
This is precisely how he died, Yefim, he who rebelled. He was captured and his body nailed to the cross, immobilized like an insect, on display for human and inhuman eyes, but most of all inhuman eyes, which take the most delight in all such spectacles; hardly a surprise that they repeat them every year and celebrate, praying to the corpse.
This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads – this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences.
What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time’s passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps, newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, election results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others.
What they want is to pin down the world with the aid of barcodes, labelling all things, letting it be known that everything is a commodity, that this is how much it will cost you. Let this new foreign language be illegible to humans, let it be read exclusively by automatons, machines. That way by night, in their great underground shops, they can organize readings of their own barcoded poetry.
Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves.
JOSEFINE SOLIMAN’S THIRD LETTER TO FRANCIS I
Your Majesty maintains a silence and is no doubt engaged in important affairs of state. But I will not abandon my efforts, and so I write to Your Majesty once again in order to beg for mercy. My last letter was written over two years ago, yet I have had no response. I repeat, then, this plea.
I am the only child of Angel Soliman, Your Majesty’s servant, eminent diplomat for the Empire, an enlightened and widely respected man. I beg for mercy for myself, for I shall never know peace so long as I should have the knowledge that my father, my father’s body, has not yet obtained a Christian burial but is instead – stuffed and chemically treated – on view in the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities at the court of Your Majesty.
Since the birth of my son, I have suffered from an illness that continues to get worse. I fear this matter is as hopeless as my own health and now believe that if I am to obtain anything – which I think I shall not – it will be but by the skin of my teeth. The word ‘skin’ fits perfectly here, as – if I may be permitted one more mention of it – my father was skinned when he died, subsequently stuffed, and now serves as an exhibit in Your Majesty’s collection.