Then Alikhanov once again saw the volleyball court, white against the grass. Now, though, he was not only himself, but the woman in the wet bathing suit, or any outsider, even the gloomy graduate student with the newspaper in his hand.
Something unclear was happening to Alikhanov. He was no longer able to discern reality. Everything familiar and essential, what seemed to be the work of his hands, now was remote, obscure and insignificant. The world dwindled to the dimensions of a television screen in someone else’s apartment.
Alikhanov ceased to feel either indignation or gladness. He felt convinced that the change was in the world and not within him.
His sense of alarm passed. Without thinking, he pulled open the desk drawer. He found in it bread crusts, a roll of insulating tape, a packet of vanilla biscuits, then a crumpled epaulette with a hole where an emblem used to be, two broken Christmas-tree toys, a flimsy notebook with a paper cover and half its pages torn out. Finally, a pencil.
And here Alikhanov suddenly smelt the sea, wind and fish, heard the pre-war tango and the scratchy sounds of Indonesian interjections, made out the geometrical outlines of tents in the dark, remembered the feel of hot skin pulled by wet, taut straps.
Alikhanov lit a cigarette, held it in his outstretched hand. Then in a large script he wrote on a page in the notebook: “In the summer, it is so easy to think you’re in love. Warm green twilights wander under branches. They transform each word into a mysterious, vague sign.”
Outside the window, a blizzard had begun. The white flakes hit the glass at a slant, coming out of the darkness.
“In the summer, it is so easy to think you’re in love,” he whispered.
A lance corporal, still half asleep, shuffled down the corridor, brushing against the wallpaper with a rustle.
“In the summer, it is so easy to think you’re in love.” Alikhanov felt quiet pleasure. He lovingly changed a word and wrote: “In the summer it is not easy to think you’re in love.”
Life had become malleable. It could be changed with the movement of a pencil with cold, hard facets and a relief inscription “Orion”.
“In the summer it is not easy to think you’re in love,” Alikhanov repeated again and again.
At ten o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by the guard he was to relieve, who came in red-nosed and angry from the cold.
“I’ve been running around the zone all night like an errand boy,” he said. “A real sideshow. Boozing, a knife fight, the isolator stuffed with punks…”
Alikhanov got out a cigarette and smoothed back his hair. He would spend the whole day in the isolator. Behind the wall, the recidivist Anagi would walk from corner to corner, jangling his handcuffs.
“The tactical situation is tense,” the one coming off shift said, getting undressed. “My advice to you is, take Harun. He’s on the third chain post. It’s always safer when there’s a dog there beside you.”
“Why would I take him?” Alikhanov asked.
“What do you mean, why? Maybe you’re not frightened of Anagi?”
“Of course I am,” Alikhanov said, “very frightened. But Harun is worse.”
He put on a padded vest and went to the mess hall. The cook, Balodis, dished him out a plate of bluish oatmeal. On its edge was a yellow spot of melting butter.
The guard looked around. Faded wallpaper, linoleum, wet tables…
He picked up an aluminium spoon with a twisted stem, sat down facing a window and began to eat without enthusiasm. Just then he remembered the previous night and thought about what lay ahead of him, and a peaceful, solemn smile transformed his face.
The world had become alive and safe as in a painting. It looked back at him closely without anger or reproach.
And, it seemed, the world expected something from him.
March 11, 1982. New York
Dear I.M.,
Please excuse the delay in getting you the next chapter. Lack of time has become the bane of my life. I write only early in the morning, from six to eight. After that, there’s work at the newspaper, and at Radio Liberty. It takes so much just to keep up with correspondence. Then there’s the baby, and so on.
My only diversion is cigarettes. I’ve learnt how to smoke in the shower.
But let’s get back to the manuscript. I was telling you how my unlucky career as a writer began.
In relation to this, I just want to stop here and say something about the nature of literary activity. (I can imagine your ironic smile. Do you remember you once said, “Sergei is not interested in thought”? It seems that rumours of my intellectual impotence persist in a suspiciously stubborn way. Nevertheless, a few words.)
As is well known, the world is imperfect. The foundations of society rest on self-interest, fear and venality. The conflict between dream and reality has persisted through the millennia. Instead of the harmony desired on earth, chaos and disorder reign.
What is more, we discover something similar within ourselves. We thirst for perfection, while vulgarity triumphs throughout.
How does the activist, the revolutionary, choose to act in this situation? A revolutionary makes attempts to establish world harmony. He starts to transform life, sometimes achieving curious results, similar to Michurin’s. Let’s suppose he breeds a carrot which is absolutely indistinguishable from a potato. Basically, he tries to create a new human species. It’s well known how all of this ends.
What does the moralist try to do in this situation? He also tries to achieve harmony, but not in life, just in his own soul, by way of self-perfection. In this case, it’s very important not to confuse harmony with indifference.
The artist takes a different path. He creates an artificial life and uses it to supplement vulgar reality. He creates an artificial world in which nobility, honesty and compassion appear to be the norm.
The results of this kind of activity are known a priori to be tragic. The more fruitful the efforts of the artist, the more deeply tangible the rift between dream and reality will be. Everyone knows that women who overuse cosmetics begin looking old earlier.
I understand that all my arguments are trivial. It was no accident that Vail and Genis* dubbed me “the troubadour of honed banality”. I am not offended. For truisms are in unusually short supply these days.
My conscious life was a road to the summits of banality. At the price of enormous sacrifices, I came to understand what people had tried to instil in me since childhood. But by now these truisms have become part of my personal experience.
A thousand times I heard: “The main thing in marriage is to share spiritual interests.”
A thousand times I answered: “Depravity is the path to virtue.”
I needed twenty years in order to master the banality instilled in me, in order to make the step from paradox to truism.
I came to understand a great deal in prison camp. I understood that greatness of spirit does not necessarily accompany physical power. It is usually just the opposite. Spiritual strength is most often contained in a frail, awkward covering, while physical prowess often comes with inner impotence.
The ancients used to say, “Sound of body, sound of mind.” In my opinion, this isn’t so. It seems to me that it is precisely the physically healthy who are most often spiritually blind, most often in the healthy body that moral apathy reigns.
While doing guard service, I knew a man who had not been frightened when he came face to face with a bear. Nevertheless, all a superior had to do was shout at him to disturb his equilibrium.
I myself was a very healthy person, and don’t I know about spiritual weakness!
The second truth I mastered is even more banal. I came to the conclusion that it is stupid to divide people into good and evil. And also into Communists and non-Party members, into villains and righteous, and even into men and women.