At the same time, the letter about freezing obviously made an impression on Stalin. From Muromtsev’s point of view, that explains the happy fate of the LAZARUS employees. They not only avoided the firing squad, they were also accommodated in humane, by camp standards, conditions. After ending up on Solovki, the laboratory workers found out the author of the resolution was feeling a personal interest in the experiments they had conducted. He had not yet crushed all his enemies but he knew he would certainly deal with them and then the time would come to think about immortality.
That interest manifested itself to its full extent when Stalin telephoned Academician Muromtsev one day. He asked if the rats used in the experiment remained alive. After receiving an affirmative answer, Stalin proposed continuing the experiment on live people. The academician had not expected scientific guidance from the political leader but nonetheless ventured to object along the lines that upon filling blood vessels with a solution, it is not so particularly important whether the organism is dead or alive, that it might as well be dead upon freezing in any case, and, finally, where would he find live people for goals like those, anyway?
Stalin went silent. He sincerely did not understand the problem since there were still so many live people at the camp. The political leader asked the academician to pass the phone to the camp chief and ordered him to find live people. Assuming he was being blamed for the conditions in which he held prisoners, the chief promised, in a weak voice, to find live people. He was, of course, not being blamed for anything, though.
Live people were found in the isolation cell at Sekirka. From the camp chief’s perspective, these were people ready to do anything. They had no exaggerated expectations about how long they would remain alive. Their advantage over other live people lay in the fact that they would choose freezing voluntarily. These people did not need to be subjected to beating that would ruin human material and, thus, the experiment’s purity. People from Sekirka were delivered to Anzer, fed well for several months, and then used for the experiment.
Muromtsev told me about much more (he later invited me for walks more than once) but each day I listened to him less attentively. I walked along the shore with him, nodded to him when his speech broke off, and laughed when he laughed, though I was thinking about my own matters. Sometimes I was not even thinking, I was simply watching as muddy shreds of foam floated along the shore. As sharp Anzer rocks tore open an ebbing wave. Muromtsev and I had a warm relationship: in some sense we had a common cause. But one circumstance existed that gradually distanced me from him: Muromtsev remained alive. And I was preparing to die.
FRIDAY
Today after the hospital, Nastya invited me to her place. Rather, to Anastasia’s place, to an old, roomy apartment not far from where Znamenskaya Church had stood. Which, to my surprise, no longer exists. The metro is there: the underground world triumphed over the celestial world.
It turned out that Nastya had prepared lunch for my visit. First borsch, then pork braised in wine, unbelievably tasty. I, of course, have eaten well all these months – on Geiger’s orders, meals were brought to me in a dinner pail – but a meal in a dinner pail is one thing and a meal from Nastya’s warm hands is another. One is government-funded, the other is homey… I even feel awkward for writing so specifically about food.
‘You didn’t really cook this all specially for me?’ I asked.
How silly my formal ‘you’ sounded. She smiled: that’s exactly how she cooked it. Specially. Her leg touched my thigh as she was clearing dishes from the table. There was not the same intensity in our formal ‘you’ that there had once been with Anastasia. Times had probably changed: what was cherished then now seems ceremonious and absurd. Nastya and I needed to somehow begin speaking on informal terms. But how?
While looking at books on the shelves, I saw… Themis. The statuette of my childhood with the broken-off scales. The shelf with Themis cast off from the remaining shelves and began sailing around the room. I had just been eating Nastya’s borsch, spoon by spoon, and it turns out Themis was standing behind my back. I extended a hand to her and then withdrew it right away. Nastya noticed the gesture.
‘My grandmother’s statuette. One of the few things remaining from the old time. And do you recognize this?’
My photograph stood alongside Themis. Anastasia must have ended up being my mother’s heir. Who else could my mother have left all that to? My father took the photograph not long before his death.
Siverskaya, 1917, I am standing, leaning against the railing of the small bridge. Arms crossed on chest, gazing (at my father’s request) into the distance. The rapid flow of the Oredezh under me, underwater plants coiling in its current. If you watch them for a long time, they seem to be river snakes (is there such a thing?) swimming upstream. The smell of water and pine trees, a muted cuckoo’s call from the forest’s depths.
‘Why look into the distance?’ I say to my father. ‘It’s so unnatural, it’s as if I’m not noticing you with the camera.’
‘No,’ answers my father, vanishing behind the tripod, ‘it’s a gaze into eternity because a photographic portrait includes your present and past and maybe the future, too. Irony, of course, is therapeutic, but sometimes –’ and here he straightens up and looks at me pensively ‘– there is no need to be ashamed of pathos because laughter has its own confines and is incapable of reflecting the sublime.’
My father then adjusts the camera so I can snap him and he stands on the bridge the same way and looks into the distance. There is undoubtedly more eternity in his gaze than in mine. Several weeks remain until my father crosses into eternity. Overall, everything is already prepared at Varshavsky Station.
SATURDAY
My crossing into eternity was supposed to be implemented on Solovki. From my conversations with Muromtsev, I understood that I had no chance of surviving after freezing. He was unfailingly good-natured during our walks, though it is unlikely he was experiencing a personal interest in me: more likely he wanted to form a general sense for himself about who would be frozen this time.
After finding out I was a religious believer, the academician told me that my agreeing to be frozen was not suicide on my part. He thought a decision to return to Sekirka would have been suicide to a far greater degree.
‘You have only two paths,’ Muromtsev uttered in a monotone, ‘and both appear to lead to death.’
At least he was honest. I shrugged my shoulders:
All paths lead to death.’
‘If you decide to become a Lazarus, you’ll live two or three months in complete comfort. To my taste, it’s better to die sated and doing well. In any case, the choice is yours.’
And I made it. I became a Lazarus.
SUNDAY
Anastasia died. I am leaving for the hospital, where Nastya will wait for me.
Anastasia died.
MONDAY
Today we worked on funeral preparations and that distracted us from her death. Anastasia was not exactly alive but was not quite dead as Nastya and I were ordering things and making arrangements. She was a silent participant in the discussions, if only because they revolved around her.