‘You work for them as well?’
‘I avoid them as much as I can.’
‘How did you get involved with such company anyway?’
Vorblei smiled broadly. ‘It couldn’t have been more simple. I had a five-minute telephone conversation with Gorky.’
‘And straight away they gave you a Mauser and that limousine?’
‘Listen.’ he said, ‘life is a theatre. That’s a well-known fact. But what you don’t hear said so often is that every day the theatre shows a new play. And right now, Petya, I m putting on a show the like of which you can’t imagine…’
He raised his hands above his head and shook them in the air, as though he were jingling coins in an invisible sack.
‘And it’s not even the play that’s the thing,’ he said. To continue the analogy, in the old days anyone who felt like it could fling a rotten egg at the stage. Today, however, it’s the actors who are more likely to rake the hall with machine-gun fire - they might even toss out a bomb. Think about it, who would you rather be right now? An actor or a member of the audience?’
This was a serious question.
‘What can I say? The action at this theatre of yours starts much further back than you suggest,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Besides, I think that the future really belongs to the cinematograph.’
Vorblei chuckled and nodded. ‘All the same, you think about what I said.’
‘I promise I will,’ I answered.
He poured himself some vodka and drank it.
‘Ah.’ he said, ‘about the theatre. Do you know who the Commissar for Theatres is now? Madame Malinovskaya. Of course, you never knew her, did you?’
‘I don’t remember,’ I replied, a little irritated. ‘Who the hell was she?’
Vorblei sighed. He stood up and walked across the room without speaking.
‘Petya.’ he said, sitting down facing me and gazing up into my eyes, ‘we keep on joking away, but I can see that something’s wrong. What’s happened to you? You and I are old friends, of course, but even setting that aside I could probably help you.’
I decided to risk it.
‘I will be honest with you. Three days ago in Petersburg I had visitors.’
‘Where from?’
‘From that theatre of yours.’
‘How do you mean?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.
‘Just as I said. Three of them came from the Cheka, one introduced himself as some kind of literary functionary, and the others had no need to introduce themselves. They spoke with me for about forty minutes, mostly the literary one; then they said our conversation had been most interesting, but it would have to be continued in a different place. I did not want to go to that other place because, as you know, it’s not one from which one very often returns
‘But you did come back.’ Vorblei interrupted.
‘I did not come back,’ I said, ‘I never went there. I ran away from them, Grisha. You know, the way we used to run away from the doorman when we were children.’
‘But why did they come for you?’ asked Vorblei. ‘You’ve got absolutely nothing to do with politics. Was it something you did?’
‘I did absolutely nothing at all. It sounds stupid even to talk about it. I published a poem in a newspaper, but it was a newspaper which didn’t meet their approval. And there was one rhyme in it they did not like either: «Red» and «mad». Can you imagine that?’
‘And what was the poem about?’
‘Oh, it was completely abstract. It was about the stream of time washing away the wall of the present so that new patterns keep appearing on it, and we call some of them the past. Our memory tells us that yesterday really existed, but how can we be sure that all of these memories did not simply appear with the first light of dawn?’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Vorblei.
‘Neither do I.’ I said. ‘But that is not the point. The main thing I am trying to say is that there was no politics in it at all. At least, that was what I thought. But they thought differently, they explained that to me. The most frightening thing was that after the conversation with their consultant I actually understood his logic, I understood it so well that… It was so frightening that when they led me out on to the street, I ran away not so much from them as from this new understanding of mine…’
Vorblei frowned.
The entire story is a load of arrant nonsense.’ he said. They’re nothing but idiots. But you’re a fine fool yourself. Was that the reason you came to Moscow?’
‘Well, what could I do? As I was running away, I fired. You may understand that I was firing at a spectre created by my own fear, but that is hardly something I can explain to them at the Cheka.’
Vorblei looked at me seemingly engrossed in his thoughts. I looked at his hands - he was running them across the tablecloth with a barely perceptible motion, as though he were wiping away sweat, and then suddenly he hid them under the table. There was an expression of despair on his face, and I sensed that our meeting and my account had placed him in an extremely awkward situation.
‘Of course, that makes it worse.’ he muttered. ‘But still, it’s a good thing you’ve confided in me. I think we’ll be able to sort it out… Yes, yes, I’m sure we can sort it out… I’ll give Gorky a call straight away… Put your hands on your head.’
I did not take in the meaning of the final words until I saw the muzzle of the Mauser lying on the tablecloth. Incredibly enough, the very next thing that he did was to take a pince-nez out of his breast pocket and set it on his nose.
‘Put your hands on your head,’ he repeated.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, raising my hands. ‘Grisha?’
‘No.’ he said.
‘«No» what?’
‘Weapon and papers on the table, that’s what.’
‘How can I put them on the table.’ I said, ‘if my hands are on my head?’
He cocked his pistol.
‘My God.’ he said, ‘if you only knew just how often I’ve heard that phrase.’
‘Well, then.’ I said, ‘the revolver is in my coat. What an incredible bastard you are. But then I’ve known that since we were children. What do you get out of all of this? Do you think they’ll give you a medal?’
Vorblei smiled. ‘Into the corridor.’ he said.
When we were in the corridor he kept the gun trained on me while he rummaged through the pockets of my coat, took out the revolver and put it in his pocket. There was a furtive haste about his movements, like a schoolboy on his first visit to a brothel, and the thought occurred to me that he had probably never had to commit an act of treachery in such an obvious and commonplace fashion before.
‘Unlock the door.’ he ordered, ‘and go out on to the landing.’
‘Let me put my coat on.’ I said, feverishly wondering whether there was anything I could say to this man, so excited by his own baseness, that might be capable of changing the unfolding course of events.
‘We’re not going far.’ said Vorblei, ‘just across the boulevard. But put it on anyway.’
I took the coat down from the hanger with both hands, turned slightly to thrust my arm into one of the sleeves, and the next moment, to my own amazement, I had flung the coat over Vorblei - not simply tossed it in his direction, but actually thrown it right on top of him.
To this day I do not understand how he failed to shoot me, but a fact is a fact. He pressed the trigger only as he was falling to the floor under the weight of my body and the bullet missed my side by a few inches and struck the door of the apartment. The coat covered Vorblei’s head where he had fallen and I grabbed hold of his throat through the thick fabric. I managed to pin the wrist of the hand clutching the pistol to the floor with my knee, though before his fingers opened he had fired several more bullets into the wall. I was almost deafened by the thunderous noise. I think that in the course of the struggle I must have butted his covered face; in any case, I can clearly recall the quiet crunching of his pince-nez in the interlude between two shots.
Even after he had stopped moving, it was a long time before I could bring myself to release my grip on his throat. My hands scarcely obeyed me; in order to restore my breathing I performed an exercise, but it had a strange effect, inducing a mild fit of hysterics. I suddenly saw the scene from the perspective of an outside observer: a figure sitting on the corpse of a newly strangled friend and assiduously breathing according to Yogi Ramacharaki’s method as described in the journal Isida. As I stood up, I was overwhelmed by the realization that I had committed murder.