At first there was a smell of burning in the air, and Maria thought that someone somewhere must be burning fallen leaves. Then the first smell became mingled with that of scorched rubber, and soon she was swamped by a fog-like smoke that grew thicker and thicker until it hid everything from sight apart from the iron railings along the embankment and the few yards of space immediately around her.
Soon Maria felt as though she were walking through a long hall in an art gallery: in their trite ordinariness the segments of the surrounding world which appeared from time to time out of the all-enveloping gloom looked very much like bizarrely fashioned works of modern art. Drifting out of the gloom towards her came signboards bearing the words ‘Bureau de Change’, benches scored all over by penknives and a vast quantity of empty cans, bearing witness to the fact that the generation next still chooses beer.
Groups of agitated men carrying automatic rifles emerged from the mist and then disappeared back into it. They pretended not to notice Maria and she reacted in the same way. She already had more than enough people to remember her and think of her. How many was it - millions? Tens of millions? Maria didn’t know the exact number of them, but she was sure that if all the hearts in which fate had inscribed her name were to beat in unison, then their combined beating would be much louder than the deafening explosions she could hear from the other side of the river.
Maria looked round and screwed up her radiant eyes as she tried to understand what was going on.
Every now and then from somewhere close by - because of the smoke she couldn’t see exactly where - there was a thunderous crash; the booming sound was followed immediately by the barking of dogs and the roaring of a multitude of voices, like the noise from the crowd when a goal is scored at the stadium, Maria didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps they were shooting a film near the White House on the other bank of the river, or perhaps some new Russians were squabbling about which of them was the newest. I wish they’d get on with it and finish dividing everything up, she thought. How many more of our handsome young men must we see fall on the roadway and spill out their heart’s blood on the asphalt?
Maria began thinking about how she could lighten the unbearable burden of this life for everyone who was writhing, God knows for what reason, in the grip of these black coils of smoke that obscured the sky and the sun. Her head was filled with clear, bright, uncomplicated images - there she was in a simple dress, entering a modest flat tidied specially for the occasion by its occupants. And there they were, sitting at the table with the samovar and gazing at her lovingly, and she knew that she didn’t have to say anything, all she had to do was sit opposite them and gaze tenderly back, paying as little attention as she could to the whirring of the camera. And there was a hospital ward full of people all bandaged up and lying on uncomfortable beds, and there was her image hanging on the wall in a place where everyone could see it. They gazed at her from their beds and for a while they forgot all about their woes, their aches and pains…
This was all wonderful, but she vaguely realized that it was not enough. No, what the world needed was a strong hand, stern and unrelenting, capable of resisting evil whenever the need arose. But where was this strength to be found? And what would it look like? These were questions Maria couldn’t answer, but she sensed that they were the very reason why she was walking along this embankment in this city that was expiring in its suffering.
For a second a puff of wind dispersed the smoke surrounding Maria and a ray of sunshine fell on her. Shielding her face with her hand, she suddenly understood where she should seek the answer. Of course, it lay in those innumerable hearts and minds that had summoned her and incarnated her here, on this smoky embankment. Through the millions of pairs of eyes staring at their television screens, they were fused into a single oceanic consciousness, and this entire ocean lay open to her gaze. She looked across it, at first seeing nothing that might help her. But no, of course there was an image of all-conquering power reflected in this consciousness, and in most cases its form was much the same: the figure of a young man with a small head and wide shoulders, wearing a double-breasted crimson sports jacket and standing beside a long, low-slung automobile with his feet planted wide apart. The image of the automobile was a little bit vague and somehow blurred, because all the people whose souls Maria could see imagined it in different ways. The young man’s face was much the same, it was a very generalized face, and only the hairstyle, a slightly curly chestnut-brown crew cut, was rather more clearly defined. The jacket, however, was drawn with quite remarkable precision, and with a little effort Maria could even have managed to read the words on its gold buttons. But she didn’t try. it didn’t matter what was written on the buttons, what mattered was how this all-conquering power could be united with her own meek and gentle love.
Maria stopped and leaned on one of the low granite posts that punctuated the iron railings of the fence. Once again she had to seek an answer in the minds and hearts that had placed their trust in her, but this time - Maria was quite certain of this - the lowest common denominators of thought would not do. What was needed…
There must be at least one intelligent woman out there, she thought.
And the intelligent woman appeared almost immediately. Maria didn’t know who she was, or even what she looked like, she just caught a glimpse of tall bookshelves, a desk with heaps of papers and a typewriter, and a photograph hanging over the desk showing a man with an enormous curling moustache and intense, moody eyes. It was all in flickering, hazy black and white, as though Maria were viewing it from inside an ancient television with a screen the size of a cigarette packet that was standing somewhere off in the corner of the room. But the images disappeared too quickly for Maria to reflect on what she had seen, and then they were replaced by thoughts.
Maria understood almost nothing at all in the swirling vortex of ideas that appeared before her; apart from anything else, it was somehow musty and oppressive, like the cloud that appears when you disturb the dust of a long-forgotten lumber room. Maria decided she must be dealing with a consciousness that was extremely cluttered and not entirely normal, and she felt very relieved when it was all over. The catch netted by the pink void of her soul consisted of words whose meanings were not entirely clear-there was a brief glimpse of the word ‘Bridegroom’ (for some reason, with a capital letter), and then the word ‘Visitor’ (another capital letter), followed by the incomprehensible words ‘Alchemical Wedlock’ and after that the totally obscure phrase, sounding like a snatch of Silver Age poetry: ‘all repose is vain, I knock at the gates’. With this the thoughts ended, and then there was another brief glimpse of the man with the ecstatic eyes and the long, droopy moustache which looked like a beard growing from right under his nose.
She looked around her in bewilderment. Still more or less surrounded by smoke, she thought that perhaps somewhere close by there might be a gate she was supposed to knock at, and she took several timid steps through the murk. Immediately she was enveloped by total darkness on every side, and felt so afraid that she scurried back on to the embankment, where at least a little light remained.
And if I do knock, she thought, will anybody actually open the gate? Hardly.