Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

Go to hell, I should’ve told him, but I knew that he, too, was just another naïve sucker, an innocent adversary. He was trying to make himself seem important — Mendeleev and the periodic table give you the sense of superiority, as if somebody up there has revealed life’s big secrets to you. The strength of the periodic law.

Yes, young man, The Law is very important, it takes precedence over the little boxes in the table. We can still add on as many little boxes as we want, but the principle is the crucial thing. What is chemistry? We can only understand this by contemplating what an element is. And what is a chemical element, young man?

“A chemical element”—I decide to give him an insolent and absolutely by-the-textbook answer—“is a substance that cannot be broken down or changed into another substance by chemical means. Yes, but by other, physical means, on the atomic level — that’s where the really exciting changes happen — and what changes they are! Just like every sickness, by the way, radiation sickness is also more of a blessing than a curse. But if I were to spell it out for you, especially for you, it might very well blow your mind. Because radiation arrives in a ray of unearthly beauty, my dear professor, with a hint of the cosmos and a headstrong character. It can’t be compared with any other force — it’s corporal, yet incorporeal. And invisible. It’s a foreign substance, yet it permeates into this world boundlessly, because it arrives in waves, and the world as a whole is wavelike, woven out of sinusoids. Its colors excite the eyes. Sounds, aural stimulation, vibrate on the eardrums. Scents, undulating aromas, mobile abstract surges of information, television, radio — a vital stream of fluids!”

Thrown out of the auditorium, I stop in the empty hallway next to the milky-white, paint-smeared window. On the window ledge, on top of the layers of dust, lie the bodies of dead mosquitoes, right in front of the screen. Dead of their own accord. I see two that continue holding their pose — it’s deceptive, as if they could take flight again any second. I reach out, but they remain motionless. I blow on them, the bodies unexpectedly start crawling, far too easily. They look like decommissioned airplanes retired to some deserted airfield, left to time and to themselves. Take this one here, for example — it took off and landed, and afterward didn’t make any other movement. No effort whatsoever to continue. Or perhaps effort was impossible, too strenuous. So that’s it, game over — now it just sits in the same place, as if this act didn’t cause it any particular suffering. Its body is still standing on its legs, it hasn’t flipped over onto its back.

Again, a hallway. Now the door is not slamming behind my back, but is rather there in front of me: K-shev’s room, which I have to enter, for something more than a visit.

I have to enter quietly, to enter slowly. With all my hatred and all my respect.

THEREexist so-called personal forms of leukemia. Some of them deserve to be studied with particular attention, above and beyond the usual care for the sufferer. Certain leukemic syndromes are so rare that they are named after the patient himself: the Leroi Syndrome or Leukemia Familiae Jacobsen. So why shouldn’t there be a K-shev Leukemic Syndrome —strange, but not impossible, right? German medicine could make a new and decisive breakthrough at his expense, while Hamburg could surpass Tubingen and the Max Planck Institute in terms of glory. And K-shev himself would be immortalized in the process. I would guess they’re already at it, they can’t help but notice something strange, something unusual in the arresting pathogenic mechanism. Something that renders useless the gas-transporting blood cells, pumped out of the heart of The Boss.

But such a finding isn’t enough, the Nobel Prize is not awarded for a diagnosis alone — despite sympathetic leanings, despite the fact that the nomination committee knows that Hamburg was where Alfred Nobel founded his Dynamit AG, Alfred Nobel & Co — the oldest factory for explosives in the world.

No, a breakthrough is needed, an explosion — the prize rewards overcoming. The explosion clears away obstructions, so afterward you can pass by freely. However, I’m not sure whether certain postwar-German complexes would allow the doctors here to catch sight of such a solution. But I know, it’s all clear to me.

So — in his arm, in the crook of his elbow, there’s a shunt. A transparent tube leads to the IV drip from its other end. I pull it out — the needle is way too thick, I guess I should’ve expected that. It might hurt, but I don’t have a choice now, there’s no time. I press the tip into my skin, right above the vein. Quiet! Quietly and slowly. Pain, just as I expected. But whatever, it’s nothing to cry about. I’ve waited so long, I’ve retraced this path so many times, now we’re only separated by a few feet of medical grade rubber, the sterile tubing, like a weapon. It guarantees the attack — a pure-blooded memory, without the interference of impurities, without the presence of outsiders — just Comrade K-shev and I, just you and I.

His eyes open somehow in slow motion — has he recognized me? I thought he was sleeping, I thought he would leave his interior only with difficulty. Does he remember me?

Pumping my fist provides the initial, necessary surges. The red ribbon crawls into the transparent corridor. The blood reaches his vein. Expecting the end, he could hardly have hoped for such a final self-sacrifice. Well, Comrade K-shev, obviously there are moments when even your fabricated ideology bears fully ripened fruit, full-blooded, that is. Now it’s my turn, now the hemoglobin in me will do the rest — disease added to disease doesn’t always mean twice the disease — you only live once. Perhaps it means a cure, perhaps survival. Perhaps going back over the boundary, beyond which responsibility loses its meaning. Life, in one of its strange forms, is suffering — I give it back to you now, Comrade K-shev. I, one little Pioneer, the only one who did not turn traitor and consign you to oblivion. You can live, breathing oxygen through the radioactive cells that we now share. By your gaze I can tell that you weren’t expecting it. Yes, coming out of a coma is painful, no doubt about it. Why does it always work out such that happiness can’t be had without just a little more suffering? And not without you: not without you also means not without your definitive destruction — you understand what I’m getting at. Revenge has to play out its endgame. I’m listening, I’m waiting for the whole truth, my ears are sizzling with impatience. Comrade K-shev?

The Boss’s circulatory system envelops us, every one of us. The queen bee attracts her drones. The sun rises and sets, the goal is visible during the daylight hours, but once night falls, we stagger around in the numbing darkness, flapping our arms like wings, but without the elevating power. A slow falling, my body grows pale, emptiness frosts over my veins.

My blood is no longer inside me, it has crept out, yet it’s pleasant somehow — like an obligation being lifted. I can’t feel myself.

But what do I sense in this case, whom do I feel?

He’s dreaming now, the exhaustion before death is lapping at his body and every muscle. The magnified blossoms of the pumpkins, a bright, egg-yolk yellow — they jut out to the side above the splashes of green along the trellis. They’re licking their viney chops, they’ll drink him up with their mouths. And every drop of blood as well. I get off the motorcycle, kill the motor — I don’t want him to hear me. He’s dazed, I know — perhaps he’s injured, but at the very least he’s probably deathly tired after an all-night chase, in the rain. I left the gendarmerie, the dogs, the posse behind me, I’m going on alone, I’m going first.