Chekhov’s Journey Read online

  Actor Mikhail’s bearing and tone seemed a lot more nonchalant. From the little he’d said so far, and from what Kirilenko had already heard about him, the man seemed devoid of artistic egotism. This Mikhail wasn’t a star, with a star’s personality, and prestige at stake. Excellent! In that case the superability channel wouldn’t be blocked by competing signals …

  “Well naturally Dr Kirilenko has gone a step further!” Sonya enthused. “You usually need a whole series of trances before the acquired skill filters through and stabilises. Usually the trance subject wakes up and promptly forgets all about being Tchaikovsky or whoever.”

  “Ah, so the subject forgets?” said Felix gaily. “Surely Mike isn’t supposed to stay in a trance for weeks on end? How cruel to snap him out of it only when the film’s in the can—and the poor fellow remembering nothing about his achievement! That wouldn’t be art. It would be a conjuring trick.”

  Kirilenko scrutinised Levin’s blithe countenance. How could the main point of the report in Knowledge is Power have so eluded the man? Kirilenko surmised that Levin was fantasizing him—as a blend of variety theatre strongman and stage mesmerist. Yes: here was The Stupendous Victor—stretched out between two chairs with a couple of blocks of concrete on his chest; and Sonya Suslova, clad in glittering attire, her thighs bare to the waist, would smash these with a sledge-hammer …

  Levin’s jocular tone said quite clearly: ‘You, Doctor, might be able to direct anybody to become somebody else—scientifically. But I’m still the real Director. And if this film isn’t fabulous, then you’re a charlatan.’

  ‘Ach, people’s tangled, hidden motives! Sometimes,’ thought Kirilenko, ‘I’m just too perceptive for my own good …’ Yet danger was lurking here: danger to the Doctor’s own reputation, which naturally he was hoping to propagandize by means of the proposed film for the sake of his research and future funding.

  If Levin was maladroit in his handling of the film, or even mangled it subconsciously out of jealousy, the Doctor’s hard-won reputation would be injured publicly on film screens through all the Republics …

  It was clear that he, Kirilenko, was indeed being asked to perform as a stage hypnotist (all be it from the wings)—this was what Levin the impresario wanted. But Levin also demanded scientific credibility so that the film would be an advancement of human knowledge, something socially responsible. These were mixed motives.

  “No, no!” Sonya protested. Sonya was an enthusiastic young lady but she wasn’t entirely perceptive yet… “Dr Kirilenko has achieved a breakthrough in technique. From now on the trance subject can call up his alter ego at will. Just as an actor does,” she added grandly, though the acting profession was a mystery to her. “The human mind isn’t a single psychic system. It’s many different systems, all co-operating. Like your own Film Unit!”

  Mikhail smirked at Sergey, who looked upset.

  “So Dr Kirilenko selectively hypnotises the left brain. But he leaves the other hemisphere semi-autonomous. This method he calls ‘split-hypnosis’. Split-hypnosis should have important applications to the treatment of schizophrenia. But obviously it can help in the present case too, where … er … Mr Petrov is sane. And in all cases like it.”

  Kirilenko took over, charmingly. “That’s why I’m so delighted to work with you. To be quite honest, I was thinking along these same lines myself. But you beat me to it, you smart fellows! And now, since I’m inexcusably late, perhaps we should proceed to a demonstration? The first course: the soup… When shall we begin with, Felix Moseivich?”

  “When? Well, now …”

  “No, I mean: which year?”

  “Oh, hmm, yes. I see. What do you think, Sergey?”

  “How about here in Krasnoyarsk? Just before Chekhov sets off for Kansk.” Sergey thumbed through his notebook. “Let’s see… that’ll be … yes, May 29th 1890.”

  “I think,” said Felix, “possibly we should slot in slightly earlier … just before Tomsk, hmm?”

  Kirilenko drew an eye patch and an earplug out of his pocket.

  Sergey shrugged. “It’s all the same to me. Tomsk first, then we’ll jump him forward to Krasnoyarsk.”

  “Fine,” said Kirilenko. “Do we have a tape recorder? Yes … Paper? Good. Now, if you’ll just kindly fix this patch comfortably over your right eye, Mikhail…”

  Five

  FLOODS! WATERY DESOLATION …

  And a bittern, booming out its mad call like a pregnant cow mooing into an empty barrel.

  Anton’s felt boots were rotting apart, but he didn’t dare subject his feet to the only alternative. The leather jackboots he had blithely equipped himself with were obviously an instrument of torture designed by the Spanish Inquisition to pinch and amputate one’s pins.

  Plodging knee-deep, he and the latest driver Yevgeny hauled another pair of neurotic, shying horses towards some huts on a little hill above the flood water. Anton’s throat was hoarse from cursing, but this was the only form of encouragement these beasts understood.

  In some places the swirling water was deep enough to drown a fellow. With so much mud churned up, though, there was no telling which places these were. Drizzle drifted down like a million grey spiders’ silks. Presumably somewhere there was a proper river crossing. Somewhere.

  A tall peasant woman emerged from one of the houses. This was a heavy mud and clay edifice with a thatched timber roof. Two other such huts stood off from it, and together with a row of byres these formed a courtyard with litter and tackle lying about. An upturned sledge rested against a wagon. The place seemed relatively prosperous.

  From the porch, the woman hailed them. “Are you the medical assistant?”

  “We’re lost!” Yevgeny howled back at her. Opening his mouth wide, the more to magnify their misfortunes, he afforded Anton an eyeful of gums awash with pus due to pyorrhoea.

  “But I am a doctor!” shouted Anton.

  They tramped on to a slope of gluey black muck, which admittedly would grow splendid crops. A few more loud oaths, and the horses were out of the water too, dragging the skidding cart which was Yevgeny’s pride and joy.

  “I’m going to Tomsk,” Anton told the woman.

  “It’s God’s will! He guided you here.”

  “Ay, and who’ll guide us away again?” demanded Yevgeny.

  “Oh, our Boris’ll do that. Just as soon as …”

  Oh yes. Just as soon as his Honour, the Doctor, cures septic appendicitis or cancer of the spleen or something else equally daunting. Anton felt heavy chains settle upon him. With as good a grace as he could muster he submitted and followed the woman indoors.

  Grandpa lay abed on top of the stove. Four or five kids peered out from a deep and fuggy shelf slung beneath the ceiling. Three crones, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Witches in Macbeth, were huddled round a wooden chest—the parental bed. A sick woman lay moaning on it. A hairy bull of a man stood about, twiddling his thumbs and sighing. A spindly youth, who looked as if he had gone for height in the style of an overcrowded seedling, sat slumped on a bench staring morosely at his reflection in the blade of a knife. And there was Grandma, clucking away like an old hen, with Baby swaddled in her lap. The place was disgracefully overcrowded.

  On closer inspection, Grandma wasn’t actually clucking. Her toothless gums were smacking away at an impromptu dummy: a twist of cloth with a bread crust in it, or if Baby was specially lucky some bacon rind. Baby in its mummy cloth was all open mouth and wide liquid eyes. As Anton approached, Grandma quickly popped the saliva-sodden nib into Baby’s mouth. Arms bound by its sides, mouth stoppered, Baby now only had his eyes to talk to the world with.

  Anton had given up trying to count the number of people in this room. What was the use? He could hardly turf them out into the drizzle. Anyway, they probably wouldn’t go. Why should they? Here was a grand tale unfolding: of sickness and a stranger.

  He jerked his thumb in the direction of the chest-bed.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he
asked the tall woman.

  “Well, you see, Sir, she had her baby. But it died, and a bit of the afterbirth’s stuck in her. So Pelagaya Osipovna tried to pull it out.”

  “She tried to pull it out? What with?”

  The tall woman searched around and produced a lamp hook, rusty and sooty, with blood stains on it.

  Oh shit. Unbelievable! They may as well have murdered the poor bitch! Yes, using the same damn knife that scarecrow of a youth was holding! He must be the husband … And quite conceivably they had been planning to use that insanitary blade as their next surgical instrument.

  With an effort Anton controlled his feelings. It was all perfectly comprehensible. Anything other than this ignorant butchery would be the miracle …

  “Yevgeny,” he shouted. “Get me my doctor’s bag!”

  While he waited, he began searching his pockets in a quiet fury, he knew not quite for what. The woman would die—no doubt of it. Whatever he did.

  His fingers encountered folded paper and he pulled this out. Oh yes, that sheet of bum-wiper from the post station. He hadn’t even used it. Unfolding the torn scrap of Siberian Herald, he stared glazedly at the contents as if he was consulting a pamphlet on gynaecology which he just happened to have on hand.

  … in the North-West the peasants observed racing through the sky a shining body in the shape of a cylinder, too bright to behold. Moments later a huge cloud of black smoke arose and a tongue of flame shot up into the heavens. A crashing noise, as of artillery, was heard several times. The ground itself shook, throwing many people down, and horses even fell to their knees. A hot fierce wind blew up suddenly, tearing the roof from one house. Many people cried out in terror that this was the end of the world.

  There is no doubt whatever that a large heavenly body must have crashed to earth somewhere; though where exactly is less certain …

  This scrap of newspaper was dated… 2nd of July 1888. A year and ten months ago.

  Hysteria, wild exaggeration, ignorance! Anton could have moaned aloud.

  But the sick woman was already doing that, while she lay corrupting internally. Stuffing the paper back into his pocket, resolved that he definitely would wipe his arse on such nonsense as soon as he had time, Anton stepped over to the victim. He pulled the covers back to inspect the bloody atrocity underneath. The kids stared down from the rafters, goggle-eyed; and the crones crooned softly.

  Six

  Krasnoyarsk

  May 29th, 1890

  How are you, Olga, my precious star-gazer?

  Here am I in Siberia, and you’re far away. But how I wish you had been at my side last night so that I could squeeze your hand in the starlight and ask your advice on matters interplanetary, of which a humble doctor and scribbler knows little. (Other than that the cosmos is vast and drear, and that time stretches out intolerably till this planet will be as cold as space itself …)

  But first a scribbler ought to set the scene, don’t you think?

  Krasnoyarsk is an excellent town—particularly after such vile Asiatic holes as Tomsk. Goodness alone knows why they send exiles here to Krasnoyarsk! This must seem more like a reward, what with the grand forested mountains encompassing the city like high walls, and the broad swift Yenisey winding its way through—worthier of Levitan’s brush even than the Volga. And I mustn’t forget the town itself. Why, there are paved streets and gracious churches and handsome houses built of stone! But they do send exiles here, and they’ve done so for years. Result? Krasnoyarsk is quite cultured, as well as being picturesque.

  Anyhow, I have fallen in with an army doctor and a pair of lieutenants all on their way to the Amur. We intend to travel onward together, so I shall hardly need my revolver. Boldly would I harrow Hell itself in company with this trio.

  Can you read my writing? This ink is disgusting. Blot and splotch.

  So let me tell you about these brave fellows. Dr Rodé is something of a philosopher and pessimist—and, by turns, an idealist. Half the time he speaks of the new and happy life awaiting us in some distant future epoch when we’ll all fly across Siberia by balloon, and when a sixth sense will be developed so that our minds can reach out to the stars. Then he grows gloomy (worn out by his enthusiasm) and it’s all a case of: ‘We can’t be real. The present can’t be real. This is all a nightmare in somebody’s mind a thousand years ahead!’

  Then there’s Baron Nikolai Vershinin. The Baron really puts it on as a military man, growling the letter ‘R’ deep in this throat like the doyen of some posh cavalry regiment. He’s forever barking at people. You’d think he was ordering a Cossack to be flogged for cowardice when he calls for a cup of tea and some jam. Generally he’s abusive in company that he doesn’t know, but just you get him on his own and he’s quite a kindly, sensible man—with a concern for society. The avalanche is coming,’ he’ll warn you. He thinks Science might save us, though. And he has read Herbert Spencer, or at least he says so. But he does throw his weight around; and there’s quite a lot of weight to throw.

  Lastly there’s Vasily Fedotik, who never glances at any reading matter except a newspaper. I’m sure he hasn’t lifted an intellectual finger for the last twenty years. All that interests our Fedotik is hunting and boozing, and once he has made up his mind on a subject it would be far too much trouble to alter his opinion. One thing he has fixed in his mind is that Rode and Vershinin are both excellent wise fellows, so he has a habit of dropping the most droll aperçus into the conversation, which are all warped echoes of something the other two men have said. Invariably these ‘mottos’ are way off beam, like the wisdom of a senile babushka.

  Yesterday evening, out I sallied in company with these three musketeers to see the town …

  Everything on the journey so far has turned out contrary to expectation. In Tomsk where the local ladies are as charming as a butt of frozen herrings—fit mates for a walrus—who would have imagined that the Assistant Chief of Police would be a connoisseur of my works? Who would have expected him to do me the honour of driving me on a tour of the local houses of prostitution, as his way of paying respect to my literary achievements?

  Anyhow, there was I forming a wholly favourable impression of the town on our promenade around its remarkably clean streets—when Fedotik must suffer a sudden attack of drought. So we all had to perform an about-turn into the less salubrious quarter of town to find him an inn on the double for medicinal comfort. Oh ho, thought I: Tomsk revisited!

  “This fatal attraction for low life!” proclaimed the good Dr Rodé, as we hastened towards the dives. “It proves how democratic we Russians are.”

  “Quite right,” said Fedotik. “The Prince shall sit down with the pauper.”

  “Probably the Prince is a pauper,” observed the Baron, with a raucous laugh.

  “That’s because there are too many Princes and Counts, and Barons if you’ll pardon me,” said Rode. “Yet who’s to say that’s such a bad thing? In the future everybody may be ennobled.”

  Vershinin nodded. “Ennobled by the progress of Science. One chap’ll be a Count of Chemistry, and another a Duke of Dentistry.”

  “Trouble with all these intellectual chappies,” said Fedotik, “is they have their heads stuck in the clouds.” And he remembered to add, “Present company excepted.”

  “That’s when we Russians feel most at home,” Rode said. “With our heads stuck in the clouds. And why should that be? Is it because ordinary life’s so stuck in the mud? Is it because we’re all just stuck in a bad dream, anyway?”

  Fedotik appears to possess a sixth sense for inns; quite soon we found a fairly decent one. Decent, if you overlooked the blue fug of wood smoke proceeding from the stove …

  We ordered ourselves a bottle of Smirnov Twenty-One (would you believe?) and drank a toast to the next stage of the journey.

  Sitting nearby there was a man whose face was as flabby as a boiled turnip. From time to time he buttoned up his coat resolutely then unbuttoned it again in a perfect mime of frustration—as
though he ought to set out on some trip but was unable to make up his mind. Every time this occurred he edged a little closer to us, trying to eavesdrop on our conversation in the usual manner of inebriates, the better to butt in.

  His opportunity arose when Rode said something or other to me, ‘speaking as one man of science to another …’

  “Excuse me, Gentlemen,” interrupted our turnip, “But Science is the most noble and beautiful pursuit!” His voice had a sanctimonious lilt, with undertones of wheedling recrimination. “Excuse me, but in my opinion your scientist struggles with Nature—out of love of Mankind!”

  Our Russian genius for soulful generalizations …

  “Quite right,” agreed Fedotik. “Nature, red in tooth and claw, has to be tamed by the brave hunter!” He poured himself another glassful.

  Vershinin went bright red in the face. “Who the Devil do you think you are?”

  “Sidorov, by your leave. Ilya Alexandrovich.”

  “Be off with you, you banal Sidorov! How could a Sidorov know one iota of the heights of human thought?”

  Naturally Sidorov shuffled himself even closer to us.

  “Excuse me, Gentlemen, but banality is the whole trouble—you’ve hit the nail on the head. The ordinary human being is downright stupid. You can see that easily in these God-forsaken Siberian holes.”

  “Present premises excepted,” chipped in Fedotik.

  “But Nature is even stupider. The Earth whirls round the Sun like a child’s spinning top: how trivial it all is! At any moment a dark star or a wandering moon might crash into us. Splat! And that’s that. Goodbye to the Parthenon and to Venice Serenissima.” Tears rose to Sidorov’s eyes. “Look at your average Siberian—a beast, isn’t he? Mind you, he’s your ordinary run of Russian peasant who’s been brutalised.”

  “A brute needs the whip,” quoted Fedotik.

  “Mark my words, Sirs, compared with him the tribes a few hundred versts north of here are noble …,” and Sidorov hunted for the word, “savages. Well, almost. Compared to him they’re quite magnificent. They’re heroes. But how can they be heroes if they’ve always stayed here?—that’s what puzzles me. They never rose above their condition. Whereas we local Russians have sunk down to it. Ah, the disgusting flatness of it all! And under the surface everything is rotten and decayed … What was I talking about?”