Ismail Kadare - Twilight of the Eastern Gods

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Antaeus. ‘Could this be the fourth degree that Maskiavicius mentioned?’

‘Hard to tell. Apparently, it wasn’t needed.’

‘What do you mean? Why did there have to be exactly that much, neither more nor less? Can you tell me that? Speak, O Greek!’

In the corridor, in the cloakroom, on the staircase, out in the courtyard — not a word. I was tempted to go and question Maskiavicius in person: could this be the fourth degree? But I thought better of it. Everybody was converging on the auditorium where, as if to rub out the memory of the sinister anti-Pasternak event, there’d just been an enthusiastic reception for a friend of the Soviet Union, the Malagasy poetess Andriamampandri Ratsifandrihamanana, to be followed shortly by an equally warm-spirited reception for the eminent leader of the Algerian Communist Party, Larbi Bouhali.

Today was different in every way from the cloudy Pasternakian yesterday. The walls were plastered with posters bearing exclamatory slogans praising Soviet-Algerian friendship. The drapery that covered the long table of the Presidium had acquired a purplish hue. Red canvas banners bore slogans where USSR and Algeria were accompanied by words like ‘heroic’, ‘blood’, ‘freedom’, ‘bombs’ and ‘flag’. Over the loudspeaker came revolutionary marching songs.

At last he made his entrance to a long ovation, waving at the audience, smiling and cheerful: a positive hero emerging without transition from the fire of epic combat. The clapping didn’t stop all the time he was walking slowly towards the podium. Just as Larbi Bouhali got to the steps that led up to the lectern, Seriogin and a colleague took hold of him by the arms, and that was when the whole audience, through the mist of strong emotion, realised that he had a gammy leg, or perhaps an artificial one. That was all it took for the ovation to rise to a new level (level four), in a paroxysm that had to end in screaming. Eyes were watering, and breathing felt like swallowing your neighbour’s exhalation. Seriogin gestured to the audience in a way that suggested, ‘That’s enough… such strong feelings… at your age…’ In the row behind mine, Shakenov had already launched into one of his heroic ballads and the ‘Belarusian Virgins’ had taken out their handkerchiefs, while Antaeus hissed something hateful into my left ear. He sounded as if he was speaking from far away. ‘It’s all a lie, believe me. I know the story well. He hasn’t set foot in Algeria for years. As for his leg, he broke it when he was skiing somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow. You got that? He broke his leg skiing. That scoundrel has a dacha next door to a Greek guy, who told me about it. Sure, he’s an imposter, you understand? A fraud!’

When the meeting was over Antaeus and I left together. I hadn’t seen Stulpanc anywhere.

‘Some militant that was!’ Antaeus muttered, from time to time. We were both in the darkest of moods. In Algeria there was bloody carnage, and that bastard was waiting for the war to end so he could return and seize power. ‘And then he’ll sell his country to the Soviet Union for a dacha and a pair of slippers! Oh! I’m going to burst!’

I’d never seen Antaeus so indignant. As he spoke his face twisted as if his war wounds were hurting him again. Maybe they were.

‘Are the plans for the meeting going ahead?’ I asked, to change the subject.

‘What meeting?’

It was some time before he grasped which meeting I was talking about.

‘Oh, I see,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, sure, the subcommittees are hard at work…’

The subcommittees are hard at work… I repeated to myself. O Ancient Athenian, tell me, why does that send a shiver down my spine?

We parted at the Novoslobodskaya metro station. I decided to walk all the way back to Butyrsky Khutor. It was a grey day; the buildings went on and on in interminable and depressingly monotonous rows, and the hundreds of windows, perhaps because of their skimpy panes, had a malicious look about them. I crossed Sushchevsky Val, but it was still a long way to the residence. The hundreds of television antennae on the roofs of the houses looked like so many walking-sticks raised in anger by a crowd of old folk. Four days previously, Pasternak’s name had been pouring down on them, like black snow. I went on past Saviolovsky Voksal, cursing myself for not having caught a bus. An old house had been knocked down and bulldozers were shovelling away the rubble.

What a stressful week! I thought, staring at a half-demolished concrete pillar with wire reinforcements sticking out at the top, like uncombed hair. I walked on a bit and then — who knows why? — turned round to contemplate that lump of concrete: a pillar that had lost its head.

The week ended with the death of the famous story-teller Akulina. Although she was illiterate she had long been granted membership of the Soviet Writers’ Union, and the entire complement of the Gorky Institute attended her funeral at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

A sharp wind swayed the leafless branches of the trees. It seemed to hiss the traditional opening of a Russian folktale: once upon a time, in some kingdom, in some state… в нeком цapствe, в нeком госyдapствe…

For half an hour we processed behind the pink-silk-draped coffin of the old lady who had told so many stories about the creatures of Slav myths, Scythian divinities and maybe also about that solitary head puffing out its cheeks to blow the wind across the steppe…

Once upon a time… жил-ъыл… No work of any period could have a more universal opening than that formula in the imperfect tense: once upon a time, there used to be… Nobody, no human generation, could ever do without it…

Once upon a time there used to be a foreigner who met a young Russian woman called Lida Snegina…

The long procession of mourners finally came to a standstill. Stulpanc had still not shown his face. Was he so much in love? Around marble tombs, bronze crosses and bare branches, the wind went on whistling the opening lines of fairy-tales. Once upon a time… жил-ъыл… The phrase seemed to come straight from the ancient lungs of the terrestrial globe… Once upon a time there used to be a giant state whose name was Soviet Union…

A Muscovite artist had just flown back from India, bringing smallpox into the city. He’d caught it at the funeral of a princess in Delhi — imprudently, he had gone too close to the coffin to make a hasty sketch of some of the detail. He died a few days after landing in Moscow; his friends and relatives were expected to end in the same way.

Early one morning, in front of the porter’s lodge at the Institute, a large poster went up, ordering the entire population of the city to be vaccinated, with a list of all the vaccination centres that had been set up. Anyone not following the order within forty-eight hours risked being quarantined.

A knot of people was looking at the poster.

‘Serves us right,’ Kurganov muttered. ‘We’ve got far too cosy with India.’

‘Did the epidemic come from there?’ someone asked.

‘Where else? You don’t think it came from West Germany, do you?’

‘That’s enough, Kolya,’ said his companion, tugging at his sleeve. ‘Time to go and get that vaccination.’

‘Kurganov’s right,’ said Maskiavicius, who had suddenly turned up. ‘We really did get too close to the Indies and Brahmaputras!’ Someone else guffawed. ‘Yes, that’s how it goes. We make up with some people, and pick a fight with others.’

He gave me a sidelong glance, but I didn’t respond. I’d turned to stone as I stood there reading the chilling words on the poster for maybe the tenth time. Inside, I felt something empty taking shape and a contraction somewhere near my diaphragm. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard allusions of that kind in the last few days, but never had I heard one as clear as that.