“There you go!” Gorelov looks at the brush in his hands with disgust, breaks it on his knee, and tosses it into the darkness; the pieces bounce along the floorboards, rolling into various corners. “You’ll write down everything, who said what, what you were all laughing about, any bad-mouthing…” He straightens his belt, which has slipped to the side, and pulls down his uniform jacket. “And you’ll bring it to me tomorrow. If you do it before the chiefs come to inspect your agitational art, you’ll have your artel. If you don’t, then sharpen your saw. I’ll see to it you’re assigned to my shift. That’s all, you son of a bitch, dismissed.”
Gorelov’s boots thud toward the exit and he disappears out the door. Ikonnikov crawls to the corner, still on his knees. He tosses around empty crates, scraps of plywood, and rags, and finds the hidden bottle. He tears the stopper out with his teeth and takes a couple of long, gurgling swallows. Shuffling uncertainly in the darkness, he returns to the ladder. He takes the kerosene lamp and palette, and crawls up under the ceiling. He sits on the upper step for a couple of minutes, observing the boundless dark blue expanse with transparent, fluffy clouds stretching across it. He scoops a generous amount of cadmium from the palette and smears it on the ceiling – an enormous, thick crimson blotch explodes on the firmament.
As soon as Kuznets arrives, he goes straight to the clubhouse to look at the agitational art. After stepping into the middle of the room and drilling his eyes into the ceiling, he stands, eyebrows moving and getting a feel for things. Ignatov is next to him. Gorelov trails along with them, too, and he’s milling around by the door, casting shifty glances at the chief. Ikonnikov himself is on hand, holding up the wall. He’s listless and downcast; he never did go to sleep last night, and his hand keeps grasping at his side, under the ribs, as if his stomach is seizing up. When the silence drags on, he decides to defuse the situation a little.
“Allow me,” he says. “As the artist, I’d like to say a few words about the concept… I mean about the main idea.”
The chiefs are silent, breathing loudly.
“This agitational art represents an allegory, a cumulative image of Soviet society.” Ikonnikov raises his hand, in turn, to each of the figures soaring in the sky. “The protector of our fatherland stands for our valorous armed forces. The mother with the baby is for all Soviet women. The red agronomist – a peasant engaged in farming – embodies working the land and the prosperity of our country that flows from it, and the doctor represents protecting the population from illnesses, along with all Soviet scientific thought.”
Kuznets is rocking from heel to toe and back again, and his boots squeak from the strain.
“The army and the civilian population, science and agriculture are directed, in a unified impetus, toward the red banner, a symbol of revolution.”
In the center of the ceiling, where yesterday the tall sky had been shining dark blue, there hovers a giant crimson streamer resembling a magic carpet. It’s so large that it seems it will fall any minute, covering all the little people standing under it with their heads craned upward. The weighty inscription, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” is emblazoned in thick gold and flows along its folds. It’s as if the four figures in the mural’s corners have immediately shrunk in size; they’re now devoutly extending their arms in a set direction, toward the banner.
It came out beautifully, Ignatov thinks with surprise as he scrutinizes the inspired faces of the people soaring above them. It’s truthful, in a genuine way. Nice work, artist. You didn’t betray us.
He takes half a year daubing out those small people then does the flag in one night, Gorelov laments to himself.He was loafing, the snake.
“Well,” Kuznets finally utters. “It makes a striking impression. I commend you. An artel can be entrusted to a master like this.”
And he whacks Ikonnikov’s slumped shoulder so Ikonnikov barely stays on his feet.
The chiefs leave but Ilya Petrovich stays in the club. He sits down on the ladder, lowers his head into hands smudged with paint, and sits that way for a long time. When he finally lifts his face, there’s an unfamiliar breath of redness and heat from the ceiling – it’s the banner.
Of course those are angels. Yuzuf’s mother has told him about them – about fereshte: they soar high up in the sky, feed on sunlight, and sometimes stand behind people’s shoulders, unseen, and defend them when they’re in trouble, though they rarely show themselves, only to announce something very important.
Yuzuf has even asked Ilya Petrovich if he’s drawn angels on the ceiling. Ilya Petrovich started smiling. “I might just have done that,” he said.
One time, shortly before the mural was finished and when Ikonnikov wasn’t at the clubhouse, Yuzuf had climbed the scaffolding and carefully studied the mural up close. At first he lay there a long time, looking at the golden-haired doctor, who was looking at Yuzuf. The doctor’s eyes were bright, a sharp dark blue, and his hair as luxurious as a sheep’s. He looks like our doctor, Yuzuf decided, only he’s young and doesn’t have a bald spot.
Then he looked at the agronomist. This one was even younger, just a youth, and he was dreamy and tender, with velvety cheeks and a rapturous gaze. He didn’t resemble anyone; there were no faces that joyful in Semruk.
The warrior was another matter: his eyes were stern and stubborn, and his mouth was a straight line so he looked exactly like the commandant. It was surprising how people and angels could look alike.
The woman with the child was green-eyed, with dark braids twisted on the back of her head, and the child in her arms was tiny and half-blind. Yuzuf didn’t know children were that small when they were born. He wondered if an angel’s child would be an angel, too, when it grew up. He didn’t have time to think that through because Ikonnikov had come in.
“So,” Ikonnikov asked, “did you examine it? And who are they, do you think?”
Yuzuf came down from the scaffolding and dusted himself off very seriously.
“Of course, they’re angels,” he said, “the most ordinary ones. Anybody can see that. What, you think I’m a little boy or something and don’t understand things like that?”
THE BLACK TENT
A huge log, about one and a half cubic meters, crashes from the riverside timber landing into the water, its cut yellow end spinning. People are already running over to it, pressing their hands into it and pushing it away from shore. They lead it deeper, until the water’s up to their necks, and release it where the Angara itself will catch the log and carry it off. Log drivers standing in boats and holding long pike poles will straighten the logs’ course, gathering them closer together, toward the center. Metal hooks at the ends of their pikes catch logs that stray from the flock, returning them to the channel. The long caravan of floating timber will stretch down toward the mouth of the Angara, toward the anchorage point, with the log drivers following. Barges are already there by a log boom, and people are waiting to fish out the logs, transfer them across the Yenisei, and pull them toward Maklakovo, to the lumber mill.
Workers from Semruk float the loose timber when the Angara is at its lowest levels and has calmed – it’s dangerous in high water and the timber would be damaged. Some roll the logs into the water, where another group rounds them up for the log drivers – the most reliable and tested – to take to Maklakovo.
They’d begun work today even before daybreak and the Angara is already teeming with the dark spines of logs; it’s as if there’s a school of giant fish jostling in the river. When the sun reaches its zenith, the log rollers are almost as wet (from sweat) as the rear crew, who wade around in the water pushing the logs; the first group of log drivers has already disappeared behind a bend in the river, heading toward the Yenisei.