But now–this very day–that call has come. So Forshin believes. Pacing in front of the mantelpiece he reads to them once more extracts from Pinocharsky’s momentous letter.
‘Come back to the capital, Nikolai! The times are changing, and much for the better. Now is the moment for the Philosophy League to step into the light.’
Pinocharsky told in his letter how Rizhin himself had commissioned him to found a great new institution, the House of Enlightened Arts!
‘We are to have our own new building,’ Pinocharsky wrote. ‘A splendid and beautiful place. A true monument of modernity! The plans are already drawn. I have seen them, Nikolai! Rizhin himself had a model before him on his desk when he spoke to me. Oh, you should have heard him speak, Nikolai. He is a surprisingly cultured man. Not crude at all. He speaks our language. I did not expect this at all. I remember his exact words. “Get me writers, Pinocharsky!” That’s what Rizhin said to me. “Get me musicians. Artists. Intellectuals. Build me a palace of culture. What we need now is people who will look at life clearly and show us its truth. Intellectuals will produce the goods we require most of all. Even more than power plants and airplanes and factories, we must forge strong new human souls.”
‘I must confess I was reserved at first. I played my cards close to my chest, as you can imagine. Factories are important too, I said wisely. But Rizhin leaned towards me and touched my arm. “I myself,” he said, “I myself wrote verse in my youth. You doubt me but I did. I respect poetry. I respect art. I am myself a creative man. I am your brother and your friend.”
‘I declare, Nikolai, that Papa Rizhin had tears in his eyes! “Do you mean this?” I said to him. (I wanted him to see I was a canny operator. A fellow with something about me.) “Let there be an amnesty,” that’s what Rizhin said then. “A great homecoming welcome for our finest minds, and past disagreements forgotten: that was then, this is now; we had to be tough, but now it is time to be kind.” ’
Forshin finishes reading the great letter aloud, stuffs it in the pocket of his jacket with a flourish and pauses to light his pipe.
‘And there you have it, friends,’ he says, effortless powerful voice booming. ‘We have no choice; our duty is clear. Our country and our people need us now and so we must return to Mirgorod. And the call has come none too soon, for frankly the conditions here are worsening. Belatinsk is no longer safe for us.’
‘I agree,’ says Brutskoi. ‘We can do more for Belatinsk in Mirgorod than here. We can speak up for the provinces in the capital. We can protest against the inefficiency of this neglect.’
‘Indeed,’ says Forshin. ‘If Pinocharsky is right, we will have the ear of Rizhin himself.’
‘Colleagues,’ says the miniature, frail Yudifa Yudifovna quietly, ‘I cannot believe you are falling for this transparent shit. Do you not know a trap when you see one?’
‘No, no, Yudifa!’ Forshin protests. ‘This is no trap. What about that speech of Gzowski’s that Pinocharsky enclosed?’ He quotes a part of Gzowski’s speech from memory. ‘We are in danger of destroying the spiritual capital of our people. We risk breeding a new crop of brutal and corrupt bureaucrats and a terrible new generation of cruel and lumpen youth. The New Vlast needs poetry and culture and art fit for our great aspirations. The people themselves call for it. Such words could never have been printed without sanction from the very top. It’s is as if Rizhin himself had spoken directly in public to us. This is no trap. This is enlightenment.’
‘Well I’m too old to fall for that crap again,’ says Yudifovna. ‘I’d rather take my chances here with a temporary shortage of beans than risk ending up in a VKBD cell. I’ve been there already. I’ll wait here and see how you get on.’
‘I think Yudifa is right,’ says Sitzenvaldt. ‘Pinocharsky is overexcited and misled. What he describes will never be permitted. We should stick together. If you leave us here we are too few to defend ourselves, and I for one know nothing of chickens.’
‘But how much longer do you think we can hold out here?’ says Polon. ‘One day the mob from Belatinsk will come for us, and what can people like us do then? We cannot fight.’
‘These shortages are a natural corrective mechanism,’ says Pitrim Brutskoi. ‘There will be a rebalancing before too long, you’ll see. The human soul is basically sound, and economic society is naturally efficient. I’m sure our fellows in Belatinsk will sort themselves out soon enough: all they need is systematic collective organisation.’
anisation.’‘Well I’ve had enough of hiding in the country!’ cries Olga-Marya Rapp. ‘Personal safety is secondary. We must see what is happening and write about it. My duty as an artist requires me to share whatever faces the women of the capital and report on it fearlessly!’
‘Are there no women in Belatinsk?’ mutters Yudifovna. ‘Is what’s happening here not worth writing of?’ But only Kamilova hears her.
And so, to Forshin’s dismay, the League divides. Some are for Mirgorod, and some are for staying at the dacha and waiting out the famine.
‘And what about you, Eligiya Kamilova?’ says Forshin at the end. ‘Will you and the girls come with us to Mirgorod? Surely you will? You’d be safe with us. You’d be travelling under the protection of the League.’
Kamilova hesitates.
‘All we want to do is go home to Mirgorod, Nikolai,’ she says, ‘only we cannot afford the tickets.’
Yudifa Yudifovna leans across and puts a hand on Kamilova’s arm.
‘How much do you need, Eligiya?’ she says.
‘Ninety roubles. But—’
‘I will give you all of that,’ says Yudifovna. ‘I’ll give you a hundred if you will sell me your gun.’
5
Lom spent a broken night between unclean sheets in his room in the Pension Forbat overlooking the Wieland Station and rose late and ill slept to the news that Papa Rizhin had survived the attempt on his life. He stared at the newspaper headline blankly, too stupid-tired and slow to take it in. His mind was still stuck with the noise of night trains shunting. The clank of points and signals. The echo of klaxons. Porters calling. An arc light splashing bone-sharp shadow across his wall. The empty wardrobe with the door that wouldn’t close.
Unshaven and only half awake he went out into the morning and bought black coffee and cigarettes in a railway workers’ café-bar on the corner by the pension. Laid the paper out on the table in front of him. Lit a cigarette with a cardboard match from a match book on the bar marked LOCOMOTIVE STAR. The unaccustomed smoke tasted bad and caught in his throat. His chest clenched. He ground the unfinished cigarette into the ashtray and lit another. Scooped sticky sugar into his coffee and swallowed the whole cup to take the taste away. Got another. That was breakfast.
The paper still said the same thing, which wasn’t much. Some minister for agriculture was dead and Rizhin was not. There was a photograph of Rizhin at his desk and in command, a wad of cotton stuck on where the bullet had grazed his face. Rizhin glared straight into the camera, purposeful, confident. Burning with determination undimmed. No day’s work lost for the man they couldn’t kill. Lom felt that the picture was meant for him personally: the dark energy of Rizhin’s gaze locked eyes with him. It was a challenge. See what I am? See what I can do? Did you think I could be stopped? Then think again. What’s it like to be alone?
Lom got a third coffee.
In the sleepless watches of the night he’d lit the dim bedside lamp and read again the official biography of Osip Rizhin. There was a copy in every guest house, pension and hotel room across the whole of the New Vlast. It went with the head-and-shoulders portrait on the wall. In the night the book had been an obituary, the shadowed Rizhin face above the dresser a funerary mask, but in the morning the man had climbed out of his grave, fresh and ready for the day.