It was agonizing, but reassuring. I was participating in this inside-out movement, almost like a woman in labor who physically and spiritually facilitates a process that would take place even without her participation . . . it would just take longer and be more difficult. Like a woman in labor, I too tried to push myself out better, hiding all my elongated organs that used to be suspended freely in water, and pushing out the innermost part of myself. I felt it working. My strength was ebbing, the horror had almost receded, when a new feeling arose, one I had never experienced before: I had to hurry. In this new and not yet entirely evolved incarnation, a new dimension—that of time—was already ticking, already marking out invisible boundaries. I tried to hurry—and an invisible film snapped with a deafening ring. I turned myself outward. I had pulled myself out.
Bliss is the state of non-pain. Until I knew pain, I was unable to imagine bliss. There was no more horror and no more pain (a variation of horror). The whole world had become different; I had become different. Only a small part of my “I” remained unchanged, but it was so small that it barely contained itself and was entirely on the verge of dissolution, on the verge of disappearing.
The great novelty was that my body, accustomed to locating itself around its own undefined center, now was entirely inside, and my innermost core was now on the outside and experienced a weak current, a light sensation of movement along its newly constituted surface. Probably my body, accustomed to deriving everything it had needed for its composition and movement from the external world, had not gone entirely inside: at the very least, one large protrusion remained on the surface and opened itself up. Not moisture, not water, but air filled my inner body. It expanded slightly, then fell again. My breathing engaged. But I had not even succeeded in thinking through my new thought about how every imaginable form of bliss, like pain, always has yet another degree, when something on my surface broke and new apertures opened up, and I saw Light. Had my “I” acquired vision? Or had something happened in the world that had not happened before? I don’t know. Light had formed. And Eyes had formed. And I closed them, because at the pinnacle of bliss there was pain . . .
For whom and for what am I writing this Diary of a Madman? Who will believe me if I don’t entirely believe myself? Will you read all this to the end? Will anyone read this at all? And why? Perhaps you shouldn’t bother . . . I’m talking to you, Tanechka, but at times I forget and write whatever comes into my head so that it won’t dissolve into nothing.
Yesterday I came home from work, and Vasilisa said, “Someone called for you . . .” Five minutes later I couldn’t remember the name of the person she said had called. I asked her again. Once again Vasilisa said who. But this morning I again couldn’t remember. What’s more, it seems to me that yesterday I had spoken with one of my friends on the phone, but I can’t remember with whom . . . It’s a strange kind of absentmindedness, a total lack of attention. I do what I can so that no one notices. It seems to me that this unfortunate quality displays itself least at work. There I don’t forget anything or mix anything up. Except I couldn’t remember the name of the new draftswoman. I had to write it down on a piece of paper and put it in my pencil jar. “Valeria.” To tell the truth I committed it to memory right away. There, now I finally remember who called yesterday: it was Valya, Ilya Goldberg’s wife. She called from a phone booth, said something I couldn’t quite understand. She asked that PA get involved in something. And I forgot to give him the message . . .
It seems that PA has noticed that something’s wrong with me. Sometimes I catch his “medical” gaze on me. Since the day Lizaveta the janitor died, more than half a year ago now, our relationship has fallen apart completely. He tried to explain himself to me several times, and I see that he’s suffering because of our falling-out, but there’s nothing I can do with myself. The words he spoke that night still stand between us, and I don’t know whether I could ever forget them. “You are not a woman. You don’t have that organ.” It’s true. But why is that so offensive?
Things at home are very bad. For everyone. The only one who feels great is our little foster child. She sprinkles sugar on buttered white bread. And eats a loaf of white bread a day. With a happy, self-forgetful look on her face. At the same time, though, she’s always looking askance, as if she were guilty or had stolen something. She’s gained weight. Tanechka has helped her catch up with her schoolwork. In the end it’s simply mind-boggling: I lost PA because of her.
Tanechka, why am I writing about this to you? You’re only twelve years old. But one day you’ll grow up and fall in love with someone, and then you’ll forgive me all this nonsense.
He drinks a lot. He always smells of vodka—either just consumed or the reek of yesterday’s. He’s very gloomy, but I am certain that it’s not just because of me.
For Old New Year’s—Vasilisa observes only the old calendar—she prepared a table, baked her clumsy cabbage pie, thick as your foot, and made potato salad with bologna sausage. She boiled up beef-hoof aspic. The house reeked all day from it. Her eternal fasting has ceased temporarily. In the evening PA came out to the table and put a newspaper in front of me. One of the articles was circled—about doctor-murderers. I looked at the list: half of them were his friends. The majority—Jews. He poured a glass of vodka, and chased it with a piece of cabbage pie. Then he winked at Tanechka, petted Toma on the head—she beamed—and returned to his study . . . I really wanted to talk to him, but it was impossible.
I went to bed and before falling asleep asked: Tell me what’s happening, what will happen to all of us? But nothing was shown to me.
14
ON JANUARY 13 OF THE NEW 1953, PAVEL ALEKSEEVICH went on another drinking binge. But this time there was no cheerful revelry, and no dacha. He was morose, silent, and would not come to the phone. He went to the clinic no more often than three times a week, and by two in the afternoon he was already home. Tanechka, with whom he had always spent much of his time at home, was now in the constant company of Toma.
Both Pavel Alekseevich and Tanya hesitated to offend Toma by leaving her alone, so only in the early morning would Tanya peek into her father’s study for a few minutes—to joke, giggle, and whisper in his ear one of her baby nicknames for him.
Two other children often came to the apartment, Ilya Iosifovich Goldberg’s sons, Gennady and Vitaly—thin, awkward, with breaking voices and violent acne. They came almost every day to eat dinner. Elena invited them, knowing the family’s difficult straits: Goldberg had been in prison since 1949, and Valya, who had worked in the laboratory of a Jewish doctor just arrested, was fired the day after. Left without a job, she fell ill, living from one heart attack to the next with respites only to take another trip to deliver a care package to her husband. She herself never ceased to be amazed that she was so sickly . . .
Vasilisa, whose clumsy and charitable hands passed on hundreds of money transfers and parcels, was unhappy about these dinnertime visits: as she saw it, alms were supposed to be handed out as small change or bread, not in the form of expensive meat patties. Elena guessed the reason for Vasilisa’s discontent, but said nothing . . .
Throughout the entire country, meetings of indignant citizens were held, and within the health system these events were conducted with particular inspiration. Anyone with any reputation was obliged to speak out and revile the criminals. Pavel Alekseevich realized from the outset that all doctors down to the very last one were being corralled into collaborating in these shameful accusations. He had not the least doubt that the doctors were completely innocent. Pavel Alekseevich was deeply depressed, and for the first time in his life he contemplated suicide. The thick volume, rebound in red leather, of Mommsen’s History of Rome lay constantly on his desk and whispered to him: in the period of late antiquity Pavel Alekseevich so loved, suicide was considered not a sin, but a courageous way out of a hopeless situation taken for the sake of preserving both honor and dignity. Pavel Alekseevich tried this seductive thought out on himself.