‘You are,’ said Lunacharsky, grinning in fear and shimmering his eyes furiously from left to right, ‘our special guest. One of the most respected scholars of the UFO experience in all the Soviet Union!’
‘No I’m not,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’ somebody called from the back of the little room. ‘Speak up!’
‘I am no expert in UFOs,’ I announced. ‘I fear you have been misinformed about me.’
‘You are privy to the secrets of Project Stalin,’ said a voice.
‘My taxi driver, Saltykov, told me—’ I started.
‘I read your novels,’ shouted someone else. There was a clamour of excited voices.
‘Stalin briefed you personally!’
‘You were present at the Kiev excavation!’
‘You know! Tell us!’
‘Comrades, comrades,’ shouted Lunacharsky, rolling his shoulders and flapping his hands in front of his chest. ‘One question at a time. Comrades! Friends! Fellow seekers-for-the-truth! Let him speak! Let him speak! I present to you: Konrad Skvorecky!’
‘Not Konrad,’ I said, crossly, ‘my name—’ and the applause swarmed up locustlike to devour my words. I cleared my throat. Eventually the applause died away. I looked quickly from table to table: many faces in the smoky dimness, and all staring at me with an intimidating eagerness.
‘Well,’ I said, croakily. I coughed again. ‘The first thing is that my name is Konstantin, not Konrad.’
This was greeted with perfect silence, and the several dozen pairs of eyes focused an intense attentiveness upon me. I glanced over towards Lunacharsky, but he too was nothing more than a pair of staring eyes. I began to find the sheer momentum of the room’s anticipation oppressive.
‘The second thing,’ I said, ‘is that I have no expertise whatsoever where UFOs are concerned.’
This pebble made no ripple on the smooth surface of the room’s eager attentiveness. It occurred to me that my audience might be taking this as nothing more than a polite gesture towards modesty on my part, like an Englishman’s demurral. ‘Really,’ I said. ‘I have no knowledge about them. I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I have made no study of the phenomenon, nor do I believe that such devices even exist.’
I paused. Somebody gulped in the dark, perhaps taking a drink.
‘There are no such things as UFOs,’ I tried.
This did not break the stillness either.
‘If you believe in UFOs,’ I said, ‘you are deluded.’
‘Comrade!’ said somebody from a table nearby. ‘Comrade, we understand what you are saying.’
‘You do?’
‘Certainly. We understand your need to express yourself in this manner.’ There was a murmur of agreement.
‘KGB!’ somebody hooted.
‘Wise! Be indirect! Good thinking!’
‘I don’t think,’ I said, ‘that you have properly understood what I am saying.’
There was an expectant hush.
‘There are no such things,’ I enunciated clearly, ‘as UFOs.’
A murmur went from table to table, but not of dissension, or outrage, but rather of dawning comprehension. Somebody clapped.
‘No,’ I said, becoming annoyed. ‘You are deliberately misunderstanding me. Do not transpose my negatives for positives. I am not speaking ironically, or in code; I am stating a simple truth.’
‘The truth is simple,’ somebody boomed, from the back of the cellar. ‘It is the attempt to cover up the truth that is complicated! That cover-up forces complications upon us!’
‘That’s not it,’ I said.
‘Well said, Comrade Skvorecky,’ said somebody else. ‘No! — we must hold fast to the dialectical! We must negate the official version!’
‘That’s not — look,’ I said. ‘There’s little point in inviting a speaker to come if you… look, you’re not listening to me!’
The murmuring ceased; and I was greeted again with the spookily attentive silence. ‘Don’t close your minds!’ I said. As soon as I said this I understood that it was exactly the wrong note to sound. Everybody clapped, as if I were a fellow brother and martyr. When the noise had died down I tried again.
‘There are no UFOs!’ I cried. ‘Nobody gets abducted by them! They don’t hover over fields in Georgia shooting silver beams of light at farmers!’
‘Comrade?’ called somebody from over to the right. ‘Comrade! Comrade?’
‘What is it?’
‘Your face…’ he said.
‘My face is—’
‘It is burned? Those are burn scars on your face?’
‘Indeed. The story behind those scars is…’
‘Radiation burns,’ boomed somebody else. ‘It’s a common side-effect of abduction!’
The room erupted in noise, and my piping denials were wholly swallowed up. There was a prolonged hubbub. Finally, when the noise had settled a little, somebody else cried out, ‘What was it like inside the craft, comrade?’
‘I was never abducted,’ I said.
‘Did they undertake a physical examination?’
‘What colour were they, comrade?’ somebody else shouted.
‘Were you stripped naked, comrade?’
‘Child-sized, or were you touched by some of the tall breed?’
‘I,’ I said, and my voice collapsed into a rubble of coughs. It was very smoky in that subterranean space, and a lifetime of smoking had left my lungs in a poor way.
‘The tall breed can be as high as three metres,’ somebody declared.
‘They like to probe the rectum!’ shrilled somebody, with a squeaky but penetrating voice. ‘They like to probe the rectum!’ he repeated.
‘Comrades,’ I said, getting my voice back under control. ‘Comrades, please listen to me.’
‘Was it a Moscow abduction?’ somebody demanded.
‘When Stalin himself ordered…’
‘Not only advanced technology was discovered in Kiev, but the entire history of humanity…’
‘Petrazavodsk! I was there!’
‘They like to probe the rectum!’
‘How long were you away? Time dilation can mean—’
‘They like to probe the rectum!’
‘The case of Andrei Kert’sz, he was gone for six months, although he thought that only a few hours had passed…’
‘When,’ boomed somebody above the roar, ‘spaceships travel close to the speed of light…’
‘Rectum!’
‘To map the incidence of abduction across the Soviet Union is to realise…’ screeched somebody.’
‘Ghost rockets!’
‘Radiation burns!’
‘They like to probe!’
‘The correlation between abductions and sunspot activity…’
‘Project Stalin!’
‘A properly dialectical understanding of the UFO phenomenon…’
‘Comrades,’ I tried again, but I was immediately drowned out by the high-pitched voice of rectum-man, who seemed, indeed, very insistent that the room hear what he had to say: ‘They like to probe the rectum! They like to probe the rectum! They like to probe the rectum!’
‘Friends,’ a voice bellowed, commanding the crowd in a way my raspy throat could not. It was Lunacharsky; standing beside me, with both his arms up. The ceiling was so low that this meant he was touching it. ‘Silence! Comrades, be quiet! Please!’ And the noise gradually sank back down. ‘Comrades,’ said Lunacharsky. ‘I think we’d all like to thank our friend Konrad Skvorecky for his insights…’