Gesha sat on a stool and grew pensive. Polina took a few steps towards him, fanning herself with a rose-coloured handkerchief. “Timosha! Yoo-hoo, Timosha!”
Timofei: “Why have you come? Or is something wrong at home?”
“I can’t live without you, my grey-winged dove.”
Timofei: “Go home, Polya. This is no village reading room.”
Lebedyeva pressed her fists to her temples and let out an oppressive, piercing howclass="underline" “You don’t love me any more, don’t fancy me… You’ve ruined the best years of my life… I’m all alone now, like a mountain ash in a meadow.”
Lebedyeva had trouble suppressing her sobs. Her eyes turned red. Mascara ran down her wet cheeks. Timofei, on the other hand, behaved almost mockingly. “Our work demands it,” he said through his teeth.
“Why can’t we run off to the ends of the earth!” Polina wailed.
“To join General Wrangel and the White Army,* is that it?” Gesha said, tensing up suddenly.
“Excellent,” Khuriyev said. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your behind. Chmykhalov, don’t upstage the heroine.” (This was how I learnt Gesha’s real name, Chmykhalov.) “Let’s go. Enter Dzerzhinsky. ‘Ah, the younger generation!’”
Tsurikov cleared his throat and said gloomily, “Ah, the fucking younger generation!”
“What kind of parasitical words are those?” Khuriyev broke in.
“Ah, the younger generation!”
“Good health, Felix Edmundovich,” Gesha said, rising a little.
“You’re supposed to be flustered,” Khuriyev said.
“I think he should stand up.” Gurin gave his opinion.
Gesha jumped up, overturning the stool. Then he saluted, touching his palm to his shaved head.
“Good health, sir!” he shouted.
Dzerzhinsky reached out and squeamishly shook his hand. Homosexuals were not liked in the zone, especially passive ones.
“More dynamic!” Khuriyev urged.
Gesha started talking faster. Then even faster. He rushed on, swallowing words. “I don’t know how to proceed, Felix Edmundovich. My Polinka has gone completely mad. She’s jealous of my service, do you understand?” (Gesha pronounced it “un-stan”.) “‘I’m lonesome,’ she says. And I really do love her, that Polinka. She’s my beloved, un-stan? She’s captured my heart, un-stan?”
“Again, parasite words,” Khuriyev shouted. “Be more careful!”
Lebedyeva, her back to us, was freshening her lipstick.
“Break!” the PI announced. “That’s enough for today.”
“Too bad,” Gurin said. “I was just starting to get inspired.”
“Let’s sum up.” Khuriyev pulled out a notepad. “Lenin more or less resembles a human being. Timofei gets a B minus. Polina is better than I thought she’d be, to be honest. As for Dzerzhinsky – unconvincing. Manifestly unconvincing. Remember, Dzerzhinsky is the conscience of the Revolution. A knight without fear or blemish. But the way you do him, he looks like some kind of recidivist.”
“I’ll try to do better,” Tsurikov assured him indifferently.
“Do you know what Stanislavsky* said?” Khuriyev continued. “Stanislavsky would say, ‘I don’t believe it!’ If an actor read a line in a phoney way, Stanislavsky would stop the rehearsal and say, ‘I don’t believe it!’”
“Cops say the same thing,” Tsurikov said.
“What?” The PI didn’t understand.
“The cops, I said, give you the same line. ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it…’ They nabbed me once in Rostov, and the investigator was a real douche—”
“Don’t forget yourself!” the PI shouted.
“Especially with the weaker sex present,” Gurin said.
“I’m an officer in the Regular Army,” Khuriyev said, raising his voice.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Gurin said. “I meant Lebedyeva.”
“Ah-h,” Khuriyev said. Then he turned to me. “Next time, be more active. Prepare your remarks. You’re a person who’s cultured, educated. And now you’re all dismissed. We meet again on Wednesday. What’s the matter with you, Lebedyeva?”
Tamara was quivering with little sobs, wringing her handkerchief.
“What is it?” Khuriyev asked.
“I’m feeling it so deeply…”
“Excellent. That’s what Stanislavsky called ‘transformation’.”
We said goodbye and we separated. I walked with Gurin to Barracks Six. We were going the same way.
By this time, it had grown dark. The path was lit by yellow light bulbs above the fences. In the free-fire zone, German shepherds ran back and forth, rattling their chains.
Suddenly, Gurin asked, “So how many people did they really do in?”
“Who?” I didn’t understand.
“Those dogs, of course – Lenin with Dzerzhinsky. ‘Knights without fear or radish.’”
I kept quiet. How could I know whether to trust him? And anyway, why was he being so open with me?
The zek wouldn’t let it go. “Now me, for example – I’m in for theft. Stilts, we assume, stuck it where he shouldn’t have. Gesha’s in for something on the order of black-marketeering. As you can see, not one wet job between us. While those two flooded Russia with blood, but that’s all right.”
“Look,” I said, “you’re going too far.”
“What’s going too far about it? Those people were the bloodiest transgressors ever.”
“Listen, let’s end this conversation.”
“Good enough,” he said.
After that, there were three or four rehearsals. Khuriyev would get worked up, mop his forehead with toilet paper, and shout, “I don’t believe it! Lenin is overacting, Timofei is hysterical. Polina is wagging her behind. And Dzerzhinsky looks like a thug.”
“Well, what am I supposed to look like?” Tsurikov asked sullenly. “It is what it is.”
“Did you ever hear of transformation?” Khuriyev asked him.
“I heard,” the zek said uncertainly.
“What did you hear? Just out of curiosity, what?”
“Transformation,” Gurin explained for Dzerzhinsky, “is when backstabbing thieves work as stoolies. Or else, let’s say there’s a prancing homo, but he struts around like a hard ass…”
“Some conversation,” Khuriyev said angrily. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your form. Think more about the content.”
“My bosoms are shaking,” Lebedyeva complained, “and my legs are swollen. I always gain weight when I’m nervous. And I eat so little, cottage cheese and maybe eggs.”
“Not another word about ingesta,” Gurin said to silence her.
“Come on,” Gesha fussed, “let’s try it again. I have a feeling this time I’m going to transform all the way.”
I made an effort to take an active part. Not for nothing had they crossed my name off the convoy schedules. Better to rehearse than to freeze out on the taiga.
I said something or other, using expressions like “mise-en-scène”, “super-task”, “public solitude”…
Tsurikov practically never joined in these discussions. Or if he did say something, it was always totally unexpected. I remember once, we were talking about Lenin, and Tsurikov suddenly said, “It can happen that someone looks like the lowest of the low, but his prick is healthy. Type of A-one salami.”
Gurin grinned. “You think we still remember what it looks like? I mean, that salami.”
“Some conversation,” the political instructor said angrily.
Rumours about our dramatic circle spread through the camp. Attitudes towards the play and the leaders of the Revolution were ambivalent. Lenin was generally respected, Dzerzhinsky not very much. In the mess hall, one zek foreman made a crack to Tsurikov in passing: “So, you found yourself a nice job, Stilts! Made yourself into a Chekist.”
Tsurikov’s response was to hit him over the head with a ladle. The foreman fell down. It became very quiet. Later the morose truck drivers from logging said to Tsurikov, “At least wash the ladle. You can’t dip it in the slops now.”