disUNITY

Part One-3

“Well, Michurin created a new kind of apple, didn’t he? So we’ll hatch a new kind of person.”

“But it’s not that simple, Leonid Illyich. A person isn’t an apple or a pear. We’ll need genetics.”

“Well then, gather some geneticists. Genetics isn’t banned here now.”

“Ah, but where are our geneticists…” sighed Churbasov. “We can’t bring them back.”

“Then collect some new ones,” his conversant breezed cheerily. “Make use of foreign experience.”

The academician heaved another sigh.

“Oh and by the way,” Brezhnev went on, “Keep all of this… well, you know… under wraps. Otherwise the West will try, too…”

“Understood, Leonid Illyich,” replied the academician, trying to imagine how the West, in a mad dash to compete with Moscow, would create an exemplary builder of Communism.

That same day Churbasov summoned two people. The first was an old survivor, the geneticist Wolfson. He was head scientist at the dilapidated and utterly unimportant zootechnical laboratory.

When the academician brought him up to date, wiry little Wolfson gave a sly snigger and the orioles of wrinkles which hid his deep-set green eyes began sparkling like miniature tanned suns.

“That’s what’s known as eugenics, my dear fellow, the betterment of human nature. There’s a whiff of Hitler there – he was interested in it, too, you know.”

Churbasov was as big as a mountain. He drew himself up slightly and threw the old man one of his displeased looks, the kind that the members of the nation’s medical establishment were so afraid of. But he realised at once that he wouldn’t get through to this old devil that way. Nothing would make him crack – you wouldn’t be scared of anything after what he’d been through. But just as he was thinking this, Churbasov had a bright idea:

“My dear Lupus Wolfovich, you are a man of science,” he said, bowing his diplodocusian neck and looking into those stubborn, owlish eye sockets. “I have explained the task. How you complete it is entirely up to you. You will be granted total freedom of research. Oh and by the way, you will merely be head of science. We’ll appoint someone else as director.”

This had occurred to Churbasov just a moment ago and he immediately congratulated himself on his wise decision.

“Aha, I see, a young party member with more suitable national identity,” grinned Wolfson. “By the way, I am not Lupus Wolfovich but Menahem Yegudovich… OK, let’s say we’ve agreed about the director. Just as long as he doesn’t get his hands on the fundamental research – people like that would put everything on sale.”

“I’ll sort that out with him,” the academician agreed, thinking to himself that some people have the bad habit of dotting every letter just to make sure they dot their i’s.

11.

Our homeland is eternal sleep, and we expect it to bestow attention and even consolation upon us. But no matter whether we are awake or asleep, all we see around us are icy rocks. Multitudes of icy rocks.

Arefiev was celebrating his trousers’ birthday. He deliberately kept forgetting his own birthday so as not to count his each passing year. He didn’t really have any friends, and the cobwebby old lady was not up for celebrations; she counted any catch as a cause for celebration. Arefiev had only one pair of trousers and he had bought them exactly one year ago, by chance, cheaply and brand new. A brand new pair of grey Italian cords was definitely worth celebrating!

His trousers were proudly hanging on the corner of the wardrobe door, with the legs bent at the knee giving the impression they had struck up some casual pose. Arefiev was sitting in nothing but his undies drinking cherry liqueur and, like all good folk who can control themselves and train their brains, he was not getting in the least tipsy. Such an unscientific term, “brains”, Arefiev thought remembering his university studies. The memory of bygone days prompted him to take a look at himself in the mirror hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door. The door creaked huffily and showed him a pale, flabby old youth of around forty. Nothing had changed yet his age was somehow reflected. He gave a sour grimace and his reflection grimaced, too, as it floated away into the wardrobe, for the door was closing, quietly but firmly. Well, at least I still look human, thought Arefiev. Rattled, he didn’t notice that the Sun had covered itself with a cloud for a moment, stuck out its tongue and pulled a monkey face at him. His trousers slipped quietly to the floor and lay in a little heap like a high-spirited school leaver deflated once the steam had gone out of him. Hurrying to the WC, looking somewhere inside himself instead of where he was going, the proud owner of the Italian cords stepped right on the birthday trousers’ crotch.

12.

It was the former chief secretary of the municipal Komsomol, Sikofantov, who became director of the Institute of Useful Mutations, with the personal, slobbery-kissed blessing of Leonid Illyich himself. Sikofantov had the lowest forehead in the history of humankind as a biological species. His hair grew in thickets just above his eyebrows and it was hard to guess where he kept his brains. He had a large, protruding goitre and evil tongues wagged: maybe that’s where…? The secretary-c*m-director was prone to sweating, so before greeting anyone he would give his large Komsomol hand a pre-emptive wipe. The poor man had bulging eyes and bulged with gas, too.

He immediately set aside part of the building and rented it out to a jewellers shop, and a bureau de change was quartered in the far corner.

“I’ll pay your wages with the money from their rent,” Sikofantov informed his employees when he got back from holidaying in the Canary Islands. “The Director of the Institute of Microbiology doesn’t pay any wages because he doesn’t let out the property, you see. Although he did buy himself an Alpha-Romeo in Milan, at the same place where I got mine at the beginning of the year…”

At this point a certain hushed silence fell over his employees, for no-one had encouraged him to blab yet he had spilled the beans. But there was this bottle of mineral water standing on the table in front of him, and the label said “Vera”. At last a knowledgeable person had shown up: “vera” is the Italian for “true”. But it is not the same as the true faith which makes the Russian nation so strong.

Two employees reacted to this revelation with more outrage than was appropriate, and it was explained to them, very quickly and in no uncertain terms, that they could not do anything to the director but that the director could in fact do quite a lot to them. After fuming for a while, they quietly got their own back by inventing a fond nickname for Sikofantov: his full name was German Romanovich Sikofantov, so they called him Romeovich.

13.

Later it became apparent why the late Sikofantov had feared nothing when he disclosed his Alpha-Romeo in front of everyone. When he had left his employment as the Komsomol Chief, Romeovich began working very closely, but very secretly, with a certain organisation, which in fact was more of a society than an organisation. It was called “Central,” not in the sense of basketball, but because it had a hand in the division of any spoils. Someone even dubbed this group “kremlinski” on the basis that nothing is more central than the Kremlin. The Kremlin itself took offence at such impudent claims: the journalist who used this epithet in his criminal report was even arrested, albeit not for long, just long enough for him to get his kidneys pulverised by the police. Everyone joked afterwards that he was punished “for divulging state secrets.”

It seems that when they confirmed Sikofantov’s appointment, those up there in the highest echelons (if, of course, they are the highest, which is relative) didn’t know what kind of person they were putting at the helm. It only came to light later when there was no longer any director and a great deal fewer employees.

“Who will be the next director?” the survivors were discussing the matter in muted tones when Arefiev finally showed up at work. He went into his small lab almost at once and, closing the door which gleamed with medically white paint, he shut himself off from everyone. A plaque hung on his door: “Severe Research Scientist Arefiev”. Actually, he was the senior scientist but when one of the lab assistants had jokingly changed the name plate, he had decided to leave it as it was. Arefiev was first and foremost a fatalist who didn’t like to change anything. And anyhow, “severity”, well, it rather impressed him. Before that he had been housed in the former X-ray office where there was a glowing crimson warning: “Don’t go in – mortal danger.”

As for the door of the director’s office, a burnished brass plaque soon appeared on it. It proclaimed the office was occupied by a certain

“A.F. Kannabich”.

14.

However there was no Kannabich. In fact, nobody ever set eyes on such a person. The director’s office was not locked. Anyone could go in, but an emptiness dwelt in its polished opulence, an emptiness which seemed to breathe and tremble like a frightened bird, blinking its eyelids. Nobody hung around in there for long because you soon had an uneasy feeling of being watched. The staff left memos and reports on the desk and left promptly, aware of someone’s eyes following them. The next day they would come back to collect their papers and find them duly authorised, or at least checked through, as was evident from notes in the margins. Notes which were not even in Russian but in some bizarre cuneiform.

One young lab assistant decided to spend a night in the office. He was due to be called up for the army in the autumn so he didn’t give a damn about anything anyway. But he wasn’t there in the morning. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere in the whole institute, though the night watchmen swore no-one had got past them. He couldn’t have gone anywhere else, either, as the institute was surrounded by a three metre high concrete wall topped with barbed wire. The only trace of him left in the office was a square-toed black boot made by the Moscow factory “Quickmarch”; the cuneiform in the margins of the documents on the desk looked particularly ominous that morning.

An emptiness settled over the whole country, too. It had big names, won elections and was discussed in the papers, but it was still emptiness.

It broadened its reach, took over the courts and hospitals, inadvertently stole into the Kremlin, and danced a victory dance on all TV channels. And the people were sighing: What has become of our glorious hockey players? There are no decent teachers or doctors any more, nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to listen to… Ah, but IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS…

And so things got just as bad as they had been in the good old days, only in a different way; everything was tarnished by the white stains of emptiness and the red stains of blood spilt in vain. Why in vain? Because no matter where or when blood is spilt, it is always in vain, in vain and once more in vain. And there is no historical precedence, and no-one ever learns anything from it. For Earth’s population is growing and the number of people who are always and in all ways right grows with it. Three, four, ten billion people who are always right… Funny? Frightening, but funny, too, of course.

15.

Some search for themselves within themselves; some search there for somebody else…

Happiness is never far away, it’s always just around the corner, thought Arefiev. Take this cassette which my step-brother lent me, for instance, of the Irish crooner Kieran Goss. One of the songs is called: “Love is waiting just around the corner”. But that happiness, that love, is called Death. Brahms was once asked when he was finally going to get married. “I am closer to the grave than to the marriage altar,” he replied, and indeed, he soon kept his promise and died. Promises, alas, have to be kept. And that’s why it’s best never to promise anyone anything but just to go about your business. Like living (an important business, by the way). Or working. Looking for naturally occurring mutagens, natural substances which trigger mutations in organisms. If you have a mother-mutant, why not look into the theory of mutations?