How is it that Seva faltered so his aeroplane corkscrewed down? I discovered – from all the documents that Yashin brought – that my cousin was shot in 1937. The documents did not refer directly to torture during the course of the investigation but, based on isolated cries that found their way into the records, one can gather that there was torture. Based on cries and, most important, the particularities of the information that lurched from Seva like uneven waves. Only at the first interrogation was there a conversation that was more or less substantive. The rest – since there was nothing for Seva to tell – read like unsuccessful attempts at guessing the investigators’ wishes.
The protocols, which are usually short on words, did not economize on detail this time. They told, at length, what Seva said as he begged for his life, how he sobbed loudly like a woman and fell to kiss the interrogators’ feet. In the final interrogations, after obviously losing his mind, he proposed they release him to go conquer desert regions of Uzbekistan. He demanded they come to him ten years hence and eat fruit in the garden he would plant. Seva described to the interrogators all of them drinking tea at an evening hour when there is no longer intense heat and it is easy to breathe. Judging from the detail of the notes, Seva’s speeches made a big impression on his listeners. One must suppose that the investigators tired of the interrogations and themselves dreamt of a quiet garden life. In some strange way, I, too, felt a sense of peace after reading this.
[ ]
Today Innokenty and I spoke seriously about his health for the first time. ‘More precisely, my ill health,’ he corrected. It’s good he’s joking…
I recalled the joke about how a man is brought to the hospital with a knife between his ribs. ‘So is it very painful?’ the doctor asks him. ‘Oh, no,’ answers the man, ‘only when I laugh.’
I told that joke to Innokenty. He nodded. Muttered something like how that’s about him. Then he lifted his face and there were tears in his eyes.
I didn’t bring up the topic, Innokenty did. He started talking about the changes he’s noticed in himself. If I didn’t know for certain that Innokenty doesn’t read medical books, otherwise I would have thought he was quoting a description of the symptoms of a brain disorder.
Judging from all that, his working memory has suffered most tangibly. He forgets things that just occurred. Fortunately, not all of them.
Even so, he recalls events from the beginning of the century without particular difficulty.
Hysteria has manifested itself: it was noticeable even today. In the middle of our conversation, Innokenty suddenly announced that he no longer sees any point in keeping his notes.
‘What does “no longer” mean?’ I asked. ‘What’s changed in comparison with the previous months?’
‘Well, you yourself understand perfectly well where my road now leads.’
‘No, I don’t understand. Unfortunately, nobody understands that yet.’
He looked right at me. His look was mean.
‘I should write, just so you can defend yet another dissertation?
Innokenty had never talked like that with me. I kept silent because I didn’t know what to say. He abruptly walked up to me and embraced me:
‘Forgive me, Geiger. I’m monstrously unfair.’
And I’ve already defended all possible dissertations, by the way.
[ ]
I went to the archive again, to continue familiarizing myself with Seva’s dossier. From time to time – when Seva was definitively worn out – idyllic pictures of the garden in the desert yielded to curses aimed at the interrogators as well as Soviet power in its entirety. It is interesting that at one of those moments Seva recalled our conversation about the locomotives of history. He cited those words to his torturers and said:
‘I didn’t think that locomotive would carry me here. Innokenty did, after all, warn me: go on foot.’
New interrogations involved clarifying Innokenty’s fate. The fact that Seva had personally sent me, his own cousin, to a hopeless place was deemed as especially sophisticated craftiness and part of a criminal plot. When they pressured Seva yet again, he produced not one plan but an impressive three, though not one of them corresponded to my situation at the time, something Seva did not know.
After learning they had frozen me, he advanced a fourth version. It consisted of them intending to drag the virus of revisionism – which had eaten away at me – into the communist future by freezing me. No spirit could be sensed now in what Seva uttered: there was only a tormented body. It wanted nothing beyond the cessation of torture. It did not even want life: the self-incrimination reflected in the transcripts boded nothing but the firing squad for Seva.
In revealing ever more new details about himself and me, my unfortunate relative even demanded that I be thawed and interrogated with prejudice. Several pages pasted into the dossier recorded that an attempt of the sort was undertaken. It ended lamentably for the interrogators. After clarifying whose instruction had ordered the freezing experiments, the attempt to defrost me was deemed revisionist and I remained in place. Unlike, by the way, the interrogators, who were handed over to a court.
[ ]
Platosha and I decided to legalize our relationship before God and people. First, before people: marrying requires a stamp in the passport. There’s actually a long wait at the registry office but Geiger helped with that. One of the heads of the passport service turned out to be his former patient.
‘Was he frozen, too, before he worked at the passport service?’ I asked Geiger.
‘The opposite,’ said Geiger. ‘He froze after he got there. But sometimes he thaws out: they’ll register you without a wait.’
So even Geiger has a sense of humor. My relationship with him is better than ever.
After that I went to St Prince Vladimir Cathedral and made arrangements for our wedding. They asked: with or without a choir? With a choir, of course. How could it be without a choir? I told Platosha about all that in the evening, including Geiger’s help speeding up the process. And he said:
‘If Geiger’s in such a hurry, that means things aren’t good for me. He’s the best informed of all of us.’
I started saying Geiger’s not at all in a hurry, but then the telephone started ringing. They were asking Platosha about yet another interview. He refused and hung up. He already either couldn’t recall our previous conversation or just didn’t want to continue it. Never mind, as they say. Sometimes it’s rough being with him.
[INNOKENTY]
I am ashamed of myself. I’m feeling afraid and thus tormenting those around me and, really, there are only two of them. Why am I doing that? It doesn’t even make things any easier for me. I’m afraid that some sort of latent irritation has appeared in me because I will depart and they will remain. If that is truly how things are, then my behavior is doubly shameful. I need to watch myself carefully.
I told Geiger the other day that I don’t intend to write any longer. But now I understand: I do intend to. Because of my daughter. If she is not fated to see me alive, I will appear before her in written form, as they say, and my pages will accompany her throughout her life. There is no point in writing about the major events: she’ll find out about those anyway. The descriptions should touch on what occupies no place in history but remains in the heart forever.