Ian Watson: Stalin's Teardrops

"Sir," said Peterkin, "it is executed in Carpathian pysanka style."

"You don't say?" The General brought his fist down upon the painted egg, crushing the shell, splitting the boiled white flesh within. "Thus I execute it. In any case, Easter is months away."

"You're unhappy about all these new reforms, aren't you, Comrade General?" Valentin asked cautiously, "I mean, deeply unhappy. You hope to retire honourably, yet what sort of world will you retire into?"

"One where I can hope to gather mushrooms in the woods to my heart's content, if you really wish to know."

"Ah, but will you be allowed such tranquility? Won't all manner of dark cupboards be opened?"

"I'm busy opening those cupboards," snapped Mirov. "As quickly as can be. Absurdist plays, concrete poems, abstract art, economic critiques… We scurry to grease their publication, do we not? Grow faster, trees, grow faster! We need your pulp. Bah! I'm somewhat impeded by the sloth of your department of cartography. I demand true maps, as soon as can be." With a cupped hand he swept the mess of broken boiled egg into a trash basket.

"Those dark cupboards also contain corpses," hinted Valentin.

"For which, you imply, I may one day be brought to book?"

"Well, you certainly oughtn't ever to write your memoirs."

"You're being impertinent, Valentin. Insubordinate in front of a subordinate." The General laughed barkingly. "Though I suppose you're right. The world is now shifting more swiftly than I imagined possible."

"We aren't safe here, in this world that's a-coming."

The bells continued to ring out cacophonously and triumphantly as if attempting to crack a somewhat leaden sky, to let through rifts of clear blue.

Peterkin spoke dreamily. "The egg celebrates the mysteries of birth and death and reawakening. Simon of Gyrene, the egg merchant, helped Jesus to carry his cross. Upon Simon's return he found to his astonishment that all the eggs in his basket had been coloured with many hues."

"I'll bet he was astonished!" said Mirov sarcastically. "There goes any hope of selling my nice white eggs! Must I really listen to the warblings of this tinpot Dostoevsky? Has the cartography department taken leave of its senses, Colonel? Oh, I see what you mean about Comrade Peterkin's personality. But why do you bother me with such nonsense? I was hoping to catch up on some paperwork this morning and forget about the damned-"

"Ding-dong of rebirth in our land?"

"Carl Faberge made his first imperial Easter egg for the Tsar and Tsaritsa just over a century ago," said Peterkin.

"Please excuse his circuitous approach to the meat of the matter, General," begged Valentin. "Almost as if he is circumnavigating an egg? I promise he will arrive there sooner or later."

"An egg is like a globe," Peterkin continued. "The department of cartography has never designed globes of the world."

"The world isn't shaped like an egg!" objected Mirov, his cracked veins flushing brighter.

"With respect, it is, Comrade General," murmured Valentin. "It's somewhat oblate… Continue, Peterkin!"

"Faberge cast his eggs from precious metals. He inlaid them with enameling, he encrusted them with jewels. He even kept a special hammer by him to destroy any whose craftsmanship fell short of his own flawless standards."

"What is this drivel about the Tsar and Tsaritsa?" exploded Mirov. "Are you preaching counter-revolution? A return to those days of jewelled eggs for the aristocracy and poverty for the masses? Or is this a metaphor? Are you advocating a putsch against the reformers?"

"Traditions continue," Peterkin said vaguely.

"Yes," agreed Valentin. "We are the descendants of the secret police of the imperial empire, are we not? Of its censors; of its patriots."

"Bah!"

Peterkin cleared his throat. He seemed impervious to the General's displeasure.

"The craft of decorating eggs in the imperial style continues… in the dead ground of this very city."

"Dead ground?"

"That's a discovery some of us have made," explained Valentin. He gestured vaguely through a window, to somewhere beyond the onion domes. "The wholesale falsification of maps produces, well, actual false places- which a person in the right frame of mind can genuinely reach. Peterkin here has found such places, haven't you, hmm? As have I."

Peterkin nodded jerkily like a marionette on strings.

"You're both drunk," said Mirov. "Go away."

"I can prove this, General. Comrade Grusha strayed into one of those places. She was following me, acting as an amateur sleuth. Ah, the new generation are all such amateurs compared to us! Now she haunts that place because she lacks the cast of mind that I possess-and you too, General."

"What might that be?"

"An instinct for falsification; for the masking of reality."

"I'm charmed at your compliment."

"You'd be even more charmed if you came with me to visit my darling young mistress Koshka who lives in such a place."

One ageing man regarded the other quizzically. " You , Valentin? A young mistress? Excuse me if I'm skeptical."

"You might say that such a visit is a rejuvenating experience."

Mirov nodded, misunderstanding. "A youthful mistress might well be as invigorating as monkey glands. Along with being heart attack territory."

"To enter the dead ground is rejuvenating; you'll see, you'll see. That's one frontier worth safeguarding-the border between the real and the ideal. Perhaps you've heard of the legend of the secret valley of Shangri-la? The place that features on no map? To enter it properly, a man must be transformed."

"That's where the egg crafters come into this," prompted Peterkin.

" Internal exile , General! Let me propose a whole new meaning for that phrase. Let me invite you to share this refuge."

"You insist that Comrade Grusha's still alive?"

"Oh yes. She walks by my Koshka's apartment at nights."

"So where does she go to by day?"

"I suspect that it's always night for her. Otherwise she might spy some escape route, come back here, stir up more trouble…"

"Are you telling me, Colonel Valentin, that some zone of aberrant geometry exists in our city? Some other dimension to existence? I don't mean the one advertised by those wretched bells."

"Exactly. Just so."

Mirov stared at the portrait of Dzerzhinsky, who would have answered such an eccentric proposition with a bullet, and sucked in his breath.

"I shall indulge you, Colonel-for old time's sake, I'm tempted to say-if only to study a unique form of psychosis which seems to be affecting our department of cartography."

"It's best to go in the evening, as the shadows draw in."

"It would be."

"On foot."

"Of course."

"With no bodyguard."

"Be warned, I shall be armed."

"Why not, General? Why ever not?"

But Peterkin smirked.

So that same evening the three men went by way of certain half-frequented routes, via this side street and that alley and that square until the hollow raving of the bells was muffled, till distant traffic only purred like several sleepy kittens, and a lone owl hooted from an old-fashioned cemetery amidst century-old apartment blocks.

As if playing the role of some discreet pimp, Peterkin indicated a door. "Gentlemen, we will now visit a lady."

Mirov guffawed. "This mistress of yours, Colonel: is she by any chance a mistress to many?"

"My Koshka lives farther away," said Valentin, "not here. Absolutely not here. Yet don't you already feel a new spring in your gait? Don't you sense the weight of years lifting from your shoulders?"

"I admit I do feel somewhat sprightly," agreed the General. "Hot-blooded. Ripe for adventure. Ah, it's years since… Valentin, you look like a younger man." He rubbed his hands. "Ah, the spice of anticipation! How it converts tired old mutton into lamb."