Heard? Well, yes and no. There existed several laboratories on Solovki about which nothing was precisely known: neither their type of activity nor even their names. But people from one of them – from this one, as I was beginning to understand – were called Lazaruses at the camp. One time I even asked someone why they were called Lazaruses but received no answer.
I had seen the Lazaruses several times at the dock. They were disembarking from a boat and made the impression of people who were doing well by camp standards: well-fed, dressed properly, and (I had learned to determine this flawlessly) not beaten. Unlike my conversation partner, the Lazaruses did not wear shoes, but even their boots were a sign of prosperity. I also recalled that the Lazaruses on Big Solovetsky Island arrived from the island of Anzer. And departed for it.
‘Are we on Anzer now?’ I asked.
His gaze was surprised.
‘Yes, we are on Anzer.’
SATURDAY
The day began with an early call from Nastya. Very early: six in the morning. They had just reported to her from the hospital (my heart fell for an instant) that Anastasia had come to. Nastya intended to stop by for me in a taxi and asked me to be waiting for her at the front door in twenty minutes. I went down ten minutes later. There were almost no pedestrians on Bolshoy Prospect yet. Cars seldom drove by, either. The sun rising behind Peter and Paul Fortress reflected yellow off the upper stories. Of course I had already seen that.
Early one summer morning, in around 1911, we are waiting for a carriage to the train station. There are upper stories and sun and a cool morning breeze. I am wearing short pants (straps crossed); there are goose bumps on my knees. I’m jumping to warm up, though, to tell the truth, I’m not really very cold. More likely: anxious. I am worried the carriage won’t show up… and we won’t go to Alushta. My sandals slap resonantly on the paving stones. That sound is gradually drowned out by the clip-clopping of hoofs. I whisper: Happiness, happiness! The carriage has arrived.
The taxi has arrived. I sit with Nastya in the back seat. Birzhevoy and Dvortsovy Bridges, then Senatskaya Square, Moskovsky Prospect. Our travel may not be to Alushta but it seems southerly overalclass="underline" it is becoming warmer in the car. I roll down the glass and place my elbow on the window. My arm lacks will and my fingers move like underwater plants – listlessly and melancholically – from the wind’s power. What will I tell Anastasia? What will she tell me?
A nurse stopped us right by the room. When she regained consciousness, Anastasia requested that a priest be called, and he was now taking her confession. The priest came out around ten minutes later, carrying the Holy Gifts on extended hands. Then the nurse was in the room for a short while. When she came out, she said we had only five minutes: Anastasia lacked the strength for more. I looked at Nastya and she nodded. She felt my fear. Lightly, she pushed me forward right by the door. I opened it.
Anastasia’s gaze greeted me. I took small steps toward it, as if to a streetlight in the dark. I felt Nastya’s hand on my shoulder, but that didn’t help me. I would even say it hindered me. I probably should have gone in to her alone. My voice froze in my throat and I did not utter a word as I approached the bed. I sank to my knees and pressed my forehead to Anastasia’s hand. I sensed her other hand – almost weightless – on the back of my head. The hand moved. It was stroking my hair, as it had stroked it in another time. There we were in our apartment on Bolshoy Prospect and everyone was still alive: my mother, Professor Voronin, and even Zaretsky. He was alive, too. They had all gone out about their business, and Anastasia and I remained. She was ailing and so I went in to see her. And I placed my forehead on her hand and she stroked the back of my head. I had been seeing all this, awake, and it turned out I was speaking, speaking out loud. They were silently listening to me: Anastasia, Nastya, and the nurse. Suddenly Anastasia broke the silence. She said:
‘Zaretsky.’
It sounded like a gate squeaking. Or a nail on glass. It was not her appearance that was furthest from how she was then, it was her voice. I raised my head. Anastasia was looking at the nurse.
‘Zaretsky, after all, is my sin.’
The nurse nodded, obviously out of politeness. It’s doubtful she knew anything about Zaretsky.
‘What do you mean, Granny?’ asked Nastya, her tone assuming no answer.
‘I… What do they call it now? Put out a contract on him… Exactly that, a contract! And that’s it, the trouble.’
‘Granny!’
‘That’s your grandmother for you. Trouble…’
Anastasia inhaled sharply and had an uncontrollable coughing fit. The nurse pounded on her back and raised her on the pillows. Without showing Anastasia, she signaled to us to leave. Her precautions were unnecessary: Anastasia could not see anything anyway. She was half-lying, breathing heavily, and her eyes were closed. We went out.
Several minutes later, they wheeled Anastasia out of the room on a stretcher. The stretcher was racing at a speed unusual for a hospital but we didn’t lag. Those coming in the other direction jumped toward the walls of the corridor. The stretcher flew off into the wide-open doors of intensive care at full speed. Those doors closed in front of us.
An hour later, an intensive-care doctor came out and told us Anastasia was in a coma. We stayed, to stand by the intensive-care doors. They brought us chairs a while later and we sat on them until evening. At around ten, they requested that we go home, citing hospital regulations. I did not even know it was already ten: after all, it’s light outside. Nastya and I understood this wasn’t about the regulations: they felt sorry for us. We left.
SUNDAY
We went to the hospital in the morning. No change.
Geiger called in the evening. It turns out that yesterday marked a half-year since the day my consciousness returned.
Will Anastasia’s consciousness return?
MONDAY
Everything is as before. Under these circumstances, that can be considered a piece of good news.
WEDNESDAY
We were at the hospital today and yesterday. We sat on chairs in the corridor. They asked us what the point was in our sitting if we would not be let into the intensive-care unit anyway. The point, we say, is that we are nearby.
The chief physician invited us to his office yesterday and announced that his staff were doing everything possible. He served us cognac. His face was rosy after the cognac and he grew rather uninhibited. He said there was basically no hope whatsoever. He gave Nastya and me business cards, for the second time, I think. As he saw us out, he straightened the lab coat tossed on his shoulders. According to Nastya, the suit under his lab coat was expensive. And would have completely lost its effect if the lab coat were all buttoned up. The suit under the lab coat reminded me of Academician Muromtsev. There was nothing else of the academician whatsoever in the chief physician.
Muromtsev. His suit, shoes, and, most important, his manner of speaking, were all very atypical of Solovki. He examined me once a day, sometimes with the attending physician, sometimes separately. Little by little, I began to understand that his interest was separate, too, and only partially coincided with the doctor’s interest. I did not, however, need very long to surmise about that interest. One time, Muromtsev asked the nurse to leave us by ourselves and then, as they say, he filled me in.
After the academician’s refusal to freeze Felix Dzerzhinsky’s corpse (1926), the Laboratory for Absolute Zero and Regeneration in the USSR was arrested en masse and sent from Leningrad to Solovki. Attempts to justify themselves through the absence of experience in freezing people were unsuccessful. Muromtsev’s letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party – in which he stated in detail the results of freezing rats and explained his refusal to freeze Dzerzhinsky – did not help, either. According to the investigator who interrogated Muromtsev, a resolution written in Joseph Stalin’s own hand was on the letter and it deemed the academician’s decision a mistake. It was indicated in the resolution that when working with Dzerzhinsky’s body, it was necessary to employ the very same scientific methods as before, regarding the deceased as a large rat.