In the streets of Moscow was a wind, a sharp, cold, whirling wind that whipped around the piles of rubble and through the parks liberated of their railings. It tore the posters off the walls and rushed their messages through the streets:
It shredded, too, the smudgy posters that Sonya’s band of street urchins had pasted up the week before: ‘The Physicist–Inventor, Nikita Slavkin, will speak about his Ultimate Communist Futurist Technology at the Polytechnic University on 12 January 1919 at 6 p.m. Entrance free. All Hail to the October Revolution!’
I hurried, alone, towards Novaya square, and the exclamation marks flew past me like arrows in the darkness.
Half an hour early, there was already a crush. I waited, looking out for Slavkin and the others, while the auditorium filled with jostling, eager spectators. Seven o’clock came and went and the audience grew impatient. Catcalls and bellowing filled the hall and three sailors sat on the edge of the stage and began to sing Red Navy ditties.
Shambling, dazzled by the light and the noise, Slavkin appeared from the wings. Raising his long, pale hands as though in blessing, he arrived at the centre of the stage and waited. His skin was bluish-white, his cheeks tinged with the delicate flush of porcelain. At last the hall fell quiet and he began to speak, his voice shaking his whole body – an engine too powerful for its fragile chassis.
‘What this Revolution really means is that we have made a promise to ourselves – that we will do everything we can to build Communism. We will not shirk, however hard the task may be. But there is one great obstacle that we have been ignoring. Who is it who grabs the best food for his own family? Who is it who shows pettiness and jealousy towards his fellow workers, who demands individual reward, who denounces others on the slightest evidence? Who, even under the dictatorship of the proletariat, deceives others, exploits others, demands his own needs be met before anyone else’s?’
‘The bourgeoisie!’ yelled a woman near the front.
‘No, it is not. We can no longer blame the bourgeoisie – they have left the country. Nor the aristocracy – they are sweeping our streets.’ He spread his arms wide as he answered his own question. ‘It is you. It is me. It is our own selves. We are now the obstruction. Before we achieve Communism, we must be wiped out – rewritten – changed.
‘I can see that you feel apprehensive about this task. You are right, it’s ambitious – by comparison everything that we have achieved so far for the Revolution is minimal. But let me reassure you. Its strength lies in the great evolutionary strength of mankind – our imagination. In your imagination – in the imagination of everyone in this room – lies the blueprint for our future. Think about it! You have the key, here, in your own mind. Here.’ He turned to the blackboard behind him where there was a drawing of the long, pod-shaped Capsules. ‘I will explain the process. This problem is in one sense merely the problem of time…’
The audience listened strangely quietly, as if stunned, to Slavkin’s lecture. They applauded, politely, his historical analysis (‘The battle is already won. It is only a matter of the slow march of time before the age of Communism dawns’); they were a little fidgety during his discourse on particle physics. As he developed the idea of multiple Universes, however, the heckling began.
‘Among this infinity of Universes, there will be one in which Communism already exists. Even if… well, even if it is not possible in this universe, I suppose.’
An incredulous murmur arose.
‘In my researches,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘I have been forced to consider the possibility that a brain fully attuned to Communism cannot physically exist in this dimension. Planck’s Law has shown us that there are some energy states that are impossible for particles in our reality. It may well be that Communism is one of those impossible states…’
The murmur swelled to a rumble. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ yelled someone.
‘Therefore a brain attuned to Communism would instantly cease to exist in this dimension and begin to exist in the compatible dimension. The Socialised subject may just… vanish,’ said Slavkin.
‘Did he just say Communism is impossible?’ said a girl near me.
‘He’s gone off his head, that’s what,’ said someone else. He turned and pushed through the crowd. ‘Move, could you? I’m not sticking around to hear this.’
‘Give him a chance,’ a voice remonstrated. ‘He’s a scientist, they talk like this.’
But all around me, others were turning to leave, shoving each other out of the way. ‘This is all wrong. Saying we’re obstructing Communism – he’s mad.’
‘What about housing?’ came a shout from the back. ‘We need living space, not this nonsense!’
Slavkin ignored all of them. He came right to the front of the stage and raised his voice.
‘You’ll say, what are we to do, if our world is incompatible with Communism? But that is to misunderstand the nature of our quantum world – the nature of matter. You are still clinging to the Newtonian Universe, but this is an illusion – it has gone, just as the whole world of Tsarism has gone, the court and the Duma and the landowners and all those facts of the old life have turned out not to be facts of our new life. Now – listen to me! – now even matter is Revolutionary. We do not understand it all yet, there is a vast amount of work to be done, but let me tell you: even matter can be bent to our will, the world shall be rebuilt even as we are rebuilt.’
I clung onto my place by a desk, straining to hear him. By this time people were filing out of the door, chatting to each other as though they were at the market. Slavkin raised his voice to a shout.
‘This has been known by the great prophets of all ages: even in the Bible, it talks of this moment. “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”’
He stopped. ‘Don’t give up,’ he said after the departing audience. ‘Don’t give up. Wait – don’t give up!’
His shoulders drooped.
‘Bravo!’ I called, pushing forwards. ‘Well said, Nikita!’
He didn’t hear. Sonya came on from the wings. She spoke to him and I saw him look up at her, so tenderly. A voice beside me made me start.
‘Well, I don’t think the audience thought much of that.’ It was Fyodor, pursing his lips. ‘Quoting from the Bible!’
‘Of course you’re delighted about that, aren’t you, Fedya? Schadenfreude – such a joy to the mean and narrow-minded.’
Fyodor flushed angrily. ‘No, no, quite the opposite,’ he said in his most measured voice. ‘I wish Nikita all the best. In fact I’m taking some colleagues of mine to meet him – they have expressed an interest in working with him on his research.’
‘Really?’ I was taken aback. ‘Who are they?’
‘From the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They are serious people, cultured.’
Fyodor gestured to a pair of dark-suited men at the back of the hall; they did indeed look serious.
‘Oh – forgive me, Fedya. I should have known you better…’
The men followed Fyodor up onto the stage. I watched as they introduced themselves. Slavkin’s face lit up. Talking ceaselessly, gesturing and embracing the men, he led them away.
16
Without any warning, a week or so after Slavkin’s last lecture, came the moment that sliced my life in two: before, after.