The substantive aspect of the euphoria that Lagudov experienced did not possess any conceptual points of intersection with Gromov’s storyline, and Lagudov himself did not link the events of the night with the book in any way. But nonetheless a certain emotional scar was left on his soul, which ensured that Lagudov did not forget the writer by the name of Gromov.
Eighteen years later Lagudov saw a short novel by Gromov in a seedy little shop at a railway station. Inspired by nostalgia for the happiness of that distant night, Lagudov bought the book; after all the reductions it cost only five copecks and it was not very large, about two hundred small pages—just right for the journey ahead.
In the suburban train circumstances once again assisted Lagudov in fulfilling the two Conditions. Some tipsy young louts travelling in his carriage were pestering the passengers. Lagudov, no longer young and not very strong, chose not to get involved with the burly yobs. As a man he felt ashamed of not being able to pull the villains up short, and so he stuck his nose into the book’s pages, pretending to be someone extremely interested in what he was reading.
The volume Lagudov had picked up this time was the Book of Memory (The Quiet Grass), which cast him briefly into a drowsy state. The book implanted in him a phantom of brilliant radiance, a mythical, non-existent memory. Lagudov was engulfed by such overwhelming tenderness for the life he dreamed of that he trembled in tearful ecstasy at this all-consuming, pure, lambent feeling.
Reading a second Book by Gromov wrought an abrupt change in Lagudov’s destiny. He left his job, divorced his wife and disappeared, leaving no tracks behind him. Three years later Lagudov surfaced again, and a mighty clan had already assembled around him, although its members called themselves a “library”. This was the term that came in time to be applied to all organizations of a similar nature.
In the first instance Lagudov’s library was joined by people on whom he had tested the Book of Memory. Initially he rather arrogantly took the miraculous effect to be the result of his own personal qualities. However, experiments showed that if the Conditions were observed, the Book affected everyone without exception. The psychiatrist Artur Friesman became Lagudov’s closest associate, although for the first few months Lagudov had doubted his mental health.
Lagudov was cautiously selective, recruiting members of peaceable professions that had been reduced to poverty—teachers, engineers, modest workers in the cultural sphere—those who had been intimidated and morally crushed by the sweeping changes of recent times. He assumed that the intelligentsia, humiliated by these new times, would provide amenable and reliable material, incapable of rebellion or betrayal, especially if the Books—and, by inference, Lagudov—could help realize the intelligentsia’s eternal yearning, as a class, for spirituality.
In many respects this supposition was mistaken. Gromov’s Books induced global personality change, and the circumspect Lagudov was merely fortunate with most of his new comrades, in addition to which he received professional assistance from Friesman, who by no means recruited anyone and everyone.
Those who joined the library usually felt profound respect and loyalty to Lagudov, and that was understandable—Valerian Mikhaylovich gave back hope to most of these despairing people tormented by poverty, offering them a meaning for their existence and a close community united around a single idea.
For the first two years the people whom Lagudov gathered under his banner were mostly humiliated and insulted members of the intelligentsia, but then he decided that the library was clearly lacking in a more robust kind of strength. And at this point Friesman came to Lagudov’s rescue. Men who had been shattered by the war in Afghanistan often came to his clinic for help. Friesman worked on these men first, and then handed them over to Lagudov. In 1991 the library was augmented by retired soldiers who had no wish to betray their Soviet oath. The former officers transformed the intelligentsia members into a serious combat unit with strict discipline and a security service. The library could turn out up to a hundred fighting men at any time.
Naturally, the system of selection did fail sometimes. Thoughtless prattlers appeared, who blabbed about the Books at every opportunity. On several occasions the shoots of conspiracy broke through the surface of the ground. But the mischief-makers all suffered an identical tragic fate—they disappeared without trace.
There were also cases of Books being stolen. Lagudov was betrayed by a rank-and-file reader, a certain Yakimov. After being issued the Book of Memory from the reserves when his turn came round, Yakimov duped the curator and fled to parts unknown. Lagudov had enough books, and the library was not impoverished, but the precedent was abhorrent in itself and, in addition, the traitor had managed to make his escape.
Other readers took their lead from this successful crime. These ones were caught. To restore Lagudov’s shaken authority and to deter any future miscreants, the book thieves were quartered in front of the entire library.
Yakimov was discovered by chance a year after the daring robbery. He had taken refuge in Ufa. A punitive assault force was immediately dispatched there, its mission to eliminate the thief and return the Book. Lagudov’s soldiers were greatly surprised when they discovered that Yakimov had not wasted his time in Ufa and had organized a library of his own.
Lagudov’s small detachment took the courageous decision not to wait for reinforcements to arrive. They openly informed Yakimov about the showdown in the laconic “we’re coming to get you” style. Cold weapons were agreed on and a spot outside the city, as remote as possible, was chosen.
It’s worth noting that the readers of Yakimov’s library lived according to the principle “the dead know no shame”. No one won the victory that night. Both adversaries withdrew, exhausted by the sanguinary conflict.
Lagudov didn’t hazard another punitive expedition. He needed to protect the book depository against the enemy closer to home and not send detachments off to the back of beyond, getting faithful readers killed in order to satisfy his own ambitions. His library was in any case surrounded by numerous aggressive rivals.
For a long time Lagudov assumed that knowledge of Gromov was being spread by traitors from his own library. He believed too strongly in his own chosen status and couldn’t possibly imagine that anyone apart from him had proved capable of penetrating the secret of the Books independently. Lagudov regarded all those who founded their power on his discovery as second-rate individuals, corrupt thieves. Even subsequently, when he was forced to abandon his ideas of exclusivity, he only accepted contact on an equal basis—and even then grudgingly—with initial, natural librarians: those who had solved the mystery of the Books with their own brains, without any prompting.
However, the proportion of those who became familiar with Gromov through information leaks was actually rather large and many new clans were organized around fugitive readers, without any theft necessarily being involved—at the end of the Eighties it wasn’t all that difficult to get hold of the Book of Memory if you really wanted to. The most important role was not played by renegades or by rumours, but by the missionary activities of the first “apostles”, whose names have long since occupied their posthumous places in the pantheon of this cruel and secretive society. Some of them are worth mentioning.