“Of course. That’s what I’ve always thought.”
“All right, let’s not talk about that for now. The Experiment is the Experiment, a rope is just a piece of string—plenty of people here console themselves like that, almost everybody. Which, by the way, is something that not a single religion foresaw. But I’m talking about something else. Why have we been left with freedom of will, even here? You’d think that in the kingdom of absolute evil, in a kingdom with ABANDON HOPE… written on its gates…”
Andrei waited for a continuation, but none came, and he said, “You have a rather strange perspective on all this. This isn’t a kingdom of absolute evil. It’s more like chaos, and we’re here to put it in order. And how can we put it in order if we don’t possess free will?”
“An interesting idea,” the old man said thoughtfully. “That had never occurred to me. So you believe that we’ve been given another chance. Something like a penal battalion—to wash away the blood of our transgressions at the front line of the eternal battle between good and evil.”
“What’s the battle with evil got to do with anything?” asked Andrei, starting to get annoyed. “Evil is something deliberate and purposeful—”
“You’re a Manichean!” the old man interrupted.
“I’m a Komsomol member!” Andrei protested, getting even more annoyed and feeling a terrific upsurge of belief and certainty. “Evil is always a class phenomenon. There’s no such thing as evil in general. But everything’s all muddled up here, because this is the Experiment. We have been given chaos. And if we can’t cope with it, we’ll go back to what we had there—to class stratification and all the rest of the garbage. Either we master chaos and transform it into the new, beautiful forms of human relations that are called communism…”
The old man listened for a while in bemused silence. “Well, well,” he said eventually with immense surprise. “Who could ever have thought it, who could ever have expected it… Communist propaganda—here! It’s not even a schism, it’s…” He paused for a moment. “But then, the ideas of communism are akin to the ideas of early Christianity, aren’t they?”
“That’s a lie!” Andrei protested angrily. “An invention of the priests. Early Christianity was an ideology of resignation, the ideology of slaves. But we are rebels! We won’t leave a single stone unturned here, and then we’ll go back there, we’ll go home and rebuild everything there the same way as we’ve rebuilt it here!”
“You’re Lucifer,” the old man said with reverential horror. “The proud spirit! Have you really not resigned yourself to your lot?”
Andrei carefully turned the handkerchief cold side down and looked at the little old man suspiciously. “Lucifer? I see. And who exactly would you be, then?”
“I’m a louse,” the old man replied tersely.
“Hmm…” That was kind of hard to argue with.
“I’m an insignificant insect, no one,” the old man explained. “I was no one there, and I’m no one here too.” He paused for a moment. “You have inspired hope in me,” he declared unexpectedly. “Yes, yes, yes. You can’t even imagine… how strange, how strange… What a joy it was to listen to you! Truly, if free will has been left to us, then why does there have to be resignation and patient suffering? Yes, I regard this meeting as the most significant episode in all the time that I have been here…”
Andrei examined him with alert hostility. He was mocking him, the old coot… No, it didn’t look like it… The synagogue caretaker? The synagogue! “Pardon me for asking,” he inquired ingratiatingly, “but have you been here for long? I mean sitting here on this bench?”
“No, not very long. At first I was sitting on a stool over there in that entranceway—there’s a stool in there… But after the Building went away, I moved to the bench.”
“Aha,” said Andrei. “So you saw the Building, then?”
“Of course I did!” the old man replied with dignity. “I sat there, listening to the music and crying.”
“Crying,” Andrei repeated, agonizingly racking his brains to figure all this out. “Tell me, are you a Jew?”
The old man started. “Good Lord, no! What kind of question is that? I’m a Catholic, a faithful and—alas!—unworthy son of the Roman Catholic Church… I have nothing against Judaism, of course, but… But why did you ask about that?”
“No special reason,” Andrei said evasively. “So you don’t have anything to do with the synagogue, then?”
“Not really,” said the old man. “Apart from the fact that I often sit here in this little square and the caretaker comes here sometimes…” He giggled in embarrassment. “He and I engage in religious disputes.”
“But what about the Building?” Andrei asked, squeezing his eyes shut to fight the pain in his skull.
“The Building? Well, when the Building comes, obviously we can’t sit here. In that case we have to wait until it leaves.”
“So this isn’t the first time you’ve seen it, then?”
“Of course not. It comes almost every night… Of course, today it stayed longer than usual.”
“Hang on,” said Andrei. “And do you know what Building that is?”
“It’s hard not to recognize it,” the old man said in a quiet voice. “Before, in the other life, I saw images and descriptions of it quite often. It’s described in detail in the confessions of Saint Anthony—that’s not a canonical text, now… for us Catholics… Anyway, I’ve read it: ‘And there appeared unto me a house, living and moving, and it did make obscene movements, and within I saw through the windows people who walked through its rooms, slept, and took food…’ I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the quotation, but it’s very close to the text… And also, obviously, Hieronymus Bosch… I would call him Saint Hieronymus Bosch—I owe him a great deal; he prepared me for this…” The old man made a broad, sweeping gesture with his hand. “His remarkable paintings… The Lord must surely have allowed him to visit here. Like Dante… By the way, there is a manuscript that is attributed to Dante, in which this Building is also mentioned. How does it go now…” The old man closed his eyes and raised one hand with widespread fingers to his forehead. “Er, er… ‘And my companion, reaching out his hand, dry and bony…’ Mmm… No… ‘The tangle of bloody, naked bodies in twilit chambers…’ Mmm…”
“Hold on,” said Andrei, licking his dry lips. “What sort of nonsense is it you’re spouting? What have Saint Anthony and Dante got to do with anything? Just what are you driving at?”
The old man was surprised. “I’m not driving at anything,” he said. “You asked me about the Building, didn’t you, and I… Of course, I must thank God that in His eternal wisdom and infinite benevolence He enlightened me and allowed me to prepare myself. I shall learn a very, very great deal here, and my heart breaks when I think of the others who have arrived here and don’t understand, who aren’t capable of understanding where they have come to. A harrowing failure to grasp the reality of things and the harrowing memory of one’s sins in the bargain. Perhaps that is also the great wisdom of the Creator, the eternal awareness of one’s sins without the awareness of retribution for them… Take you, for instance, young man: Why has He cast you down into this abyss?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andrei muttered sullenly, and thought to himself, Religious fanatics are just about all that was missing here.
“No need to be shy about it,” the old man said encouragingly. “There’s no point in hiding anything here, for the Judgement has already been made… I, for instance, sinned against my own people: I was a traitor, an informer—I saw how the people whom I betrayed to the servants of Satan were tortured and killed. I was hanged in 1944.” The old man paused. “And when did you die?”