Now that was a fine passage… Lean and precise, but at the same time not without a certain passion… Just what is he droning about, down there at the other end? Son of a bitch, what a rude bastard! Interfering with my work, and basically—
Andrei suddenly noticed with an ominous feeling that several heads in the neat rows of listeners were turned with their backs toward him. He looked more closely. There was no doubt about it—the backs of several heads. One, two… six of them! He cleared his throat as forcefully as he could and gravely rapped his knuckles on the zinc-clad tabletop. It didn’t do any good. Well, just you wait, he thought menacingly. I’ll get you now! What would that be in Latin?
“Quos ego!” he barked. “It seems like you’ve gotten it into your heads that you mean something? We’re made of stone, and you’re just putrefying flesh? We’re from everlasting to everlasting, and you’re ephemeral trash? Here, take that!” He gave them the fig sign. “Who remembers you anyway? You were all erected in memory of some jerks or other who were forgotten long ago… Archimedes—big deal! Sure, I know there was someone called that who ran naked through the streets—absolutely shameless… And so what? At the appropriate level of civilization they would have ripped his balls off for that. To teach him not to run around that way. ‘Eureka’—know what I mean? Or that Peter the Great. So, OK, he was the czar, the Emperor of All Russia… We’ve seen plenty of his kind. But what was his surname? Eh? You don’t know? All those monuments that have been erected! All those works that have been written! But just ask a student at his examination—you’ll be lucky if one out of ten remembers what his surname was. That’s ‘great’ for you! And it’s the same with all of you, isn’t it? Either no one remembers you at all, they just gape and bat their eyelids, or, let’s say, they do remember the first name but not the surname. And vice versa too: they remember the surname—the Kalinga Prize—but as for the first name… Who gives a damn about the first name? Who was he anyway? Maybe he was some kind of writer, or maybe he speculated in wool… Who wants to know, anyway, judge for yourself. Remembering all of you would make a man forget the price of vodka.”
Now he could see the backs of more than ten heads in front of him. It was offensive. And down at the other end Katzman was getting louder and louder, pushier and pushier, but his droning was still as unintelligible as ever.
“A lure!” Andrei yelled with all his might. “That’s what your much-vaunted greatness is! A lure! Hnoipek looks at you and thinks, well, would you ever, what tremendous people have lived in the world. Right, I’ll give up drinking, I’ll give up smoking, I’ll stop tumbling my Skank around in the bushes, I’ll go and join a library, and I’ll achieve all this too… That is, that’s what he’s supposed to think! But that’s not what he really thinks when he looks at you, no way! And if they don’t post sentries around you and fence you in, he’ll crap great big heaps all around you, write words on you with chalk, and go back to his Skank, feeling very pleased with himself. So much for your educational function! So much for the memory of mankind! And what the hell would Hnoipek want with memory anyway? Why the hell should he remember you, pray tell? Admittedly, there have been times when remembering all of you was considered good form. So what could people do—they committed you to memory. Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, that is, born on this date, died on that date. A conqueror. Bucephalus. ‘Countess, your Bucephalus is rather tired, and by the way, how would you like to sleep with me?’ Polite, eloquent, genteel… You have to cram stuff at school now too, of course. Born on this date, died on that date, member of the ruling oligarchical clique. Exploiter. And it’s absolutely impossible to understand who needs all that. We just used to pass the exam then wash our hands of the whole business. ‘Alexander the Great was a great general too, but why go smashing stools?’ That was this film. Chapaev. Have you seen it? ‘My brother Mika’s dying, he’s asking for fish broth…’ And that’s all your Alexander the Great is good for.”
Andrei stopped talking. All this talk was pointless. No one was listening to him. Now the backs of all the heads were turned toward him—cast iron, stone, iron, jade… shaved, bald, curly, with little braids, chipped and dented, or else completely concealed under chain mail, helmets, three-cornered hats. They don’t like it, he thought. The truth is hard to swallow. They’re used to anthems and odes. Exegi monumentum… But what did I say that was so upsetting? Well, of course, I didn’t lie, I didn’t grovel to you—I just said what I thought. I’ve got nothing against greatness. Pushkin. Lenin. Einstein… I don’t like idolatry. Deeds should be worshipped, not statues. And maybe not even deeds should be worshipped. Because everyone only does what he’s capable of doing. One makes a revolution, another makes a tin whistle. Maybe I only have enough strength for a tin whistle—so now does that mean I’m shit?
But the voice from behind the yellow fog kept droning on, and now he could hear separate words: “…unprecedented and exceptional… from a catastrophic situation… only you… merits eternal gratitude and eternal glory…” Now that’s what I really can’t stand, thought Andrei. I absolutely hate it when someone juggles with eternalities. Brothers for all eternity. Eternal friendship. Together for eternity. Eternal glory… Where do they get all that from? What can they see that’s eternal?
“Stop lying!” he shouted down the table. “Have you no shame?”
No one took any notice of him. He turned around and plodded back the way he came, feeling the draft chilling him to the bone—the stinking draft, saturated with the fetid vapors of the crypt, rust and tarnished copper… It wasn’t Izya jabbering there, was it, he listlessly thought. Izya has never spoken words like that in his entire life. I shouldn’t have blamed him… I shouldn’t have come here. Why the hell did I come here anyway? Probably I thought I’d understood something. After all, I’m over thirty now, it’s time to be figuring out what’s what. What sort of crazy idea is that—trying to persuade monuments that no one needs them? You might as well try to persuade people that no one needs them… Maybe that’s the way it is, but who’s going to believe it?
Something’s happened to me in the last few years, he thought. I’ve lost something… I’ve lost my sense of a goal, that’s what. About five years ago, I knew for certain why I had to take one course of action or another. But now—I don’t know. I know that Hnoipek should be put up against the wall, but I don’t understand what for. I mean, I understand that it would make my job a whole lot easier, but is that all it’s needed for—to make my job easier? I’m the only one who needs that. For myself. That’s probably right. No one else is going to live my life for me, I’ll have to take care of that for myself. But it’s boring, depressing, I don’t have the strength… And I don’t have any choice either, he thought. That’s what I’ve understood. A man can’t do anything; he doesn’t know how to do anything. The only thing he can do and knows how to do is live for himself. He even gritted his teeth at the hopeless clarity and certitude of this thought.
Walking out of the crypt into the shade of the columns, he screwed up his eyes. The yellow, sweltering square, studded with empty pediments, lay stretched out before him. The heat from it surged over him, like a blast from a furnace. Heat, thirst, exhaustion… This was the world in which he had to live and also, therefore, to act.
Izya was sleeping, stretched out on the stone slabs in the shade, with his forehead nestling in an open book. A jagged tear gaped open in the back of his trousers and his feet in down-at-heel shoes were unnaturally turned out. And in addition he stank from a mile away. The Mute was right there—squatting on his haunches with his eyes closed, leaning back against a column, with the automatic lying on his knees.