‘Comrade Pelyagin! What brings you here?’
We had talked about the event, I remembered. Pelyagin was having three hours of lessons a week, spread over two days, during which we discussed all sorts of subjects – politics and history as well as our childhoods (both spent in small towns), the IRT and Slavkin’s inventions. I had become quite fond of him.
He turned, and smiled – an awkward little closed-mouthed grimace – and immediately solemnised his face. ‘Comrade Freely,’ he said, with a bow. ‘Well, as a government official I try to keep myself abreast of developments in culture.’
I felt myself blushing, ridiculously. ‘Well, it’s… it’s very kind of you to come. Would you like to meet Slavkin, now you’re here?’
‘Certainly.’
I forced my way over to Slavkin, but Pelyagin was stuck behind a group of boys who were rather the worse for alcohol.
‘Oh, Nikita, my pupil wants to meet you – go and rescue him, won’t you?’ I gasped.
Slavkin, a foot taller than anyone else, passed through the crowd with ease, occasionally lifting tussling boys out of his way. With an amiable smile he arrived at Pelyagin’s side. Slavkin spoke civilly to him. The episode, framed by the flailing arms, yells and yodels of the crowd, played out like a scene in a silent film. ‘No, no, I’m quite all right,’ I saw Pelyagin answer, pulling himself upright, craning his neck back to meet Slavkin’s eye. Slavkin put a hand on his shoulder to guide him through the mêlée. Pelyagin shook his hand off, a mulish look on his face. Slavkin tried again. Pelyagin shrugged him aside, quite violently this time.
I tried to signal to Slavkin to leave him, but neither of them looked across at me. They were glaring at each other and I watched, with a sinking heart, as Slavkin took Pelyagin forcibly by the shoulders and propelled him across the room to me. I’m not sure his legs weren’t lifted off the ground.
Before I could say anything Slavkin bundled Pelyagin out through the fire escape. I squeezed after them.
Out on Tverskaya Street Pelyagin shook Slavkin off and brushed down his jacket.
‘Please forgive me, comrade, if I was mistaken,’ said Slavkin gravely. ‘Gerty asked me to come and help you. These days the kids do sometimes get carried away.’
Pelyagin cleared his throat. ‘There was no need to manhandle me.’
Slavkin shrugged.
‘Well, I’ll be on my way, Comrade Freely,’ said Pelyagin. He didn’t meet my eye.
‘Oh, won’t you wait a moment—’
‘Come on,’ Slavkin turned away brusquely. ‘Time for us to leave, Gerty.’
Pelyagin spun on his heel and departed. At our next lesson, I apologised, tentatively, for the unfortunate misunderstanding and Pelyagin brushed it off. ‘Don’t give it a thought.’
In the years since I have probably wasted not just hours, but whole days wondering about this episode, and even so I still can’t work out if it had any bearing on the course of events.
The commune gained two new members that month: Ivan Matryossin and his wife Nina, dancers who had recently arrived in Moscow from Kiev. Pasha discovered them sleeping in a corridor at his office and brought them back to live with us, claiming they couldn’t be closer to the IRT philosophy. What this turned out to mean was that they couldn’t have been closer to his philosophy, both avant-gardists through and through. Ivan and Nina showed no interest in communal living, missing our evening meetings due to their performances, refusing to collectivise their clothes, and living the life of a perfectly ordinary married couple in the night nursery, where – worst of all crimes – they hoarded food. Fyodor agitated to expel them, but it became quickly apparent to the rest of us that Ivan and Nina had something extraordinary to offer the commune. This was the Model T.
In Kiev they had spent a year working on a new type of eurhythmics, which they called the Model T system (for telo, body). It had two aims: firstly, healthy physical exertion, which they claimed exercised not only the muscles but the internal organs, the immune and nervous systems; and secondly, psychological training in ‘the rational and optimistic rhythms of the future’. With the efficiency of a Ford production line, we would be trained up physically and psychologically for Communism. The movements, many of which were quite beyond me, had names such as ‘Tearing out the Bourgeois Liver’, ‘The Power of the Turtle’, ‘The Gulls of the Soul’. They were accompanied by sounds, from a growl that came from the Turtle to the abundant flatulence that Nina produced when performing the movement to cleanse the bowels. She assured us that it would not take long, if we practised regularly, before we too would learn the same skilful control of the body.
To my surprise the Model T was an instant success, for Nina’s confident direction somehow released us all, even me, from inhibition. We spent those warm September evenings in the Summer Gardens twisting and stretching our bodies in time with her, mooing and whinnying with abandon. Groups of children might run to watch us, shouting, ‘Here come the grunters!’, but an hour of Model T left me strangely dizzy with happiness, loose-limbed as a drunkard. Afterwards we would stroll through the park, kicking the drifts of leaves, full of hilarity and nonsense. It worked better, even, than the banya. Bad temper, resentment, unhappiness – not to mention hunger and weariness – floated from us. That night I would sleep quite still, without waking or turning about, and wake with a smile on my face. The giggling children were nothing compared with the blissful calm of that sleep.
This was all the more useful for, as the first thrill of the commune faded, tense moments seemed to arise between us more and more frequently. These were never, needless to say, about politics, or morals, but usually over some idiotic detail. One evening Fyodor accused Sonya of having eaten a hundred grammes of her bread ration on the way home, driving her to tears, at which Pasha swore at Fyodor so inventively that Fyodor threatened to move out. Another time Vera and I fell out over how long she took to do the ironing. These were nothing, however, compared to the incident between Dr Marina and Volodya.
There had never been much love between the two of them; he thought her stuck up, while she detested his swearing, spitting and general air of undiluted muzhik. There was already a tension in the air when she raised the subject of the Shop Without a Clerk, from which stock had been disappearing without being noted down.
‘And I can’t help wondering why four bars of soap would have been necessary to anyone; I checked all the washbasins in the house, and each of them has soap.’
There was a pause. Nikita looked around. ‘Now is the time for anyone to speak up. We are living in trust; if someone had a reason to take more soap, tell us, and we’ll try to understand.’
‘Well—’ Volodya started.
‘I thought so,’ snapped Dr Marina instantly. ‘You traded it for cigarettes, yes? For tobacco?’
Volodya glared at her. ‘Oh, so you’d made up your mind about me already? What, I was stealing soap from all of us to keep myself in fags? Well done, Doctor, very trusting.’
Nikita held up a hand silently.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dr Marina muttered.
‘You’ll never change, will you?’ Volodya paid no attention. ‘Looking down at me, Marina Getler, that’s all you’ve ever done, you bloody bourgeoise…’
Slavkin just said, ‘Volodya.’
Volodya took a breath and visibly tried to control himself. ‘All right, I’ll tell you what I did with the soap.’
Dr Marina took a sharp intake of breath –
‘I’ll tell you: I took it to barter for a barrel of sunflower oil, best quality. Someone offered it to me down at the railway station, he’d heard I had soap.’