The Librarian

THE LITTLE GRANDSON

“I THOUGHT ABOUT IT SO MUCH…” Gorn murmured. “What it would be like… Meaning… Eternal labour… And personal immortality… They say… While Moses was copying out the Torah… The angel of death couldn’t take… His soul.” Gorn moved her hand and the thin gold bracelet of a watch showed from under her sleeve. The old woman gave a long, drawn-out moan: “Oo-oo-ooph-ooph-o-okh…”

I felt the slightly rotten breath of unclean teeth and sick bowels brush across my face. I hadn’t noticed when the transformation took place in Gorn. It was as if the hooked, peeling nose and disproportionately large, flabby ears had suddenly emerged from inside her. The moles and numerous senile warts on her face—on her narrow, dried-up forehead and cheeks—were flooded with buckwheat-coloured pigment.

“We’ve sat here too long, Alyoshka… It’s time to read. The Book of Strength. I read it twice a day… After all, I’m ninety-five… My natural life is over. Only the Book keeps…” Gorn grimaced malignantly. “Don’t like the look of me? Old? Ugly? Not a queen any longer? Not an empress? That can be rectified… I’ll just read the Book of Strength again… And you’ll respect me again.”

I felt inexpressible shame and revulsion for my minutes of vile, squalid toadying to this decrepit creature whose malicious will had condemned my friends to death…

“What’s it go to do with me?” Gorn exclaimed astutely. “Ritka gave the village away… The killing was done by those out there…”—she pointed out of the window—“I wanted the Meaning. Do you hate me? Do you want to take revenge? Well, you shouldn’t…” Gorn’s knotty fingers tightened on the cane leaning against her chair. “I saved him from death,” said Gorn, singing her own praises. “I strictly forbade anyone to lay a finger on him… What? You don’t believe me? You’re an interesting one… All the readers croaked… For some reason he’s still alive… And where’s his gratitude?” That hoarse tone of voice that had lost its power to enchant or charm was still able to convince. “And aren’t you ashamed?… To kill… an old woman?… Alyoshka… Ay-ay-ay…” A long, slim blade suddenly glided out of the cane. The blade froze a centimetre away from my face. I didn’t even have time to recoil from it. “Do you see?” Gorn asked me mockingly. “I’m more agile than you. One movement of my hand… And you’re gone…”

“You won’t kill, me,” I said cautiously, pushing the sword blade aside with my palm. “You want the Meaning.”

“Well, not all that much…” she said with an affected yawn. “What’s the big deal? The veil of the Soviet Mother of God over the country…”

Realizing that Gorn was trying to conceal her emotions, I said confidently:

“But it gives immortality! And even the Book of Strength doesn’t help you there, Polina Vasilyevna…”

“I like living,” Gorn admitted. “I don’t like dying.” The blade swayed in front of my face for a moment and slid back into the cane with a click. “But all the same. We haven’t got the insert. So what good is the Meaning?” However, she said that in a perfectly friendly voice. “It’s funny… Ritka was a fool… What was that she said?… Er… Er… Ah, that’s it… ‘I left the Meaning to Alexei… As a memento…’” Gorn laughed with a rasping sound. “But you don’t remember anything… What kind of a memento is that?”

At that moment I knew where the insert from the Book of Meaning was. I stared down at the floor trying not to betray my agitation.

“Don’t be sad, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, interpreting my slumped shoulders and lowered head in her own way. “I won’t touch you for the time being. I give you a month… You’re on probation… But hurry. Don’t weaken. Rack your brains. My patience isn’t elastic… It will snap.”

“Polina Vasilyevna…”—meanwhile I had thought up a question to allow me to weigh up all the prospects of my unexpected discovery—“…was it your idea to play music during the fighting?”

“No. It was Ritka’s idea… A placebo. But it helps… Not everyone… It depends on their character. On their age… Their cast of mind… And then you have to… get the right song… We’re figuring things out little by little. For some we’ll put on a record. For others we’ll brew up an asthma remedy. Herbs from the chemist’s… That has a bracing effect too… Various means. But you must agree… Giving out the Book of Fury… or Strength… to all sorts of riffraff…” Gorn nodded contemptuously towards the window. “They can do without. Without a Book more of them will croak… Right?”

“Did you meet Margarita Tikhonovna a long time ago?”

“A good long time ago…” Gorn said sombrely. “Ritka’s mother, Valentina Grigoryevna… was next to me… in the ward. In the old folk’s home… We all started with her… With Valentina Grigoryevna… You could say we were the pioneers. She brought Ritka. When was that?… Eighty-six… Fourteen years ago… Ritka wasn’t even fifty yet… In her prime…”

“And what about Margarita Tikhonovna’s mother? Is she still alive?”

“She is… Only she’s in a demented state. She used to oversee the Manitogorsk region… Now she’s been punished. Don’t get upset. She’s taken care of…” Gorn gave a cunning smile. “Are you trying to get me off the subject here?”

“No, Polina Vasilyevna. I just asked.”

“What else are you interested in?”

“Well, let’s say the insert is found. What happens to me then?”

“You won’t die.”

“I see…” I said and plucked up my nerve. “I need guarantees, Polina Vasilyevna.”

“Guarantees?” said Gorn, amused and surprised. “For you?”

“The moment you get the insert, you’ll eliminate me.”

“I won’t kill you… Isn’t my word enough for you?”

“Not really, Polina Vasilyevna.”

“You’re getting impudent, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, growing tenser. Her thin, colourless lips flooded with blue.

“You’ll distort your promise or interpret it in a way that suits you. Perhaps you won’t kill me yourself, but someone under you will. If not them, then the mercenaries…”

“You’re strange, Alyoshka,” Gorn said reproachfully. “Funny. Your life’s hanging by a thread… And you’re haggling like a Yid… But you haven’t got any bargaining counters.”

“I’ll remember where the insert is, Polina Vasilyevna. Definitely. It’s just a matter of time. The more reliable the guarantees are, the sooner I’ll remember… And one more thing…”

“Yes?” said Gorn, leaning forward. “I’m listening carefully…”

“Don’t use the Book of Power to influence me again. It leaves a very humiliating feeling behind.”

Gorn snickered.

“You don’t like the Book… And my will is humiliating… Very high and mighty! You’ve got carried away by your arrogance, Alyoshka.”

“You’re the one who’s arrogant, Polina Vasilyevna. You don’t want to negotiate on anything. Out of sheer caprice and conceit you’re willing to sacrifice the Meaning and immortality…”

Gorn made a strange sound, like a creaky cupboard door opening and swaying to and fro. When she finished laughing, the old woman said:

“Ritka was right… There is something about you… I understand… I can arrange things… Not even my command… Will make them kill you… On the contrary, they’ll tear poor me apart instead… Do you like that idea, Alyoshka? You’ll be the boss… The leader… But I also require guarantees… You’re asking for a lot… And in exchange… Zilch. Empty promises. That’s not really fair, is it?”

I met Gorn’s gaze and realized that I’d fallen into a trap, like Gogol’s character Khoma Brut. The grey mirrors of my dismayed soul immediately reflected a mental pandemonium dominated by terror and guile.

“Alyoshka! You green, snotty-nosed kid!” said Gorn, leaning back in her chair in elation. “Very bright!… Attaboy! Well, let me hear it, don’t be shy… There, you see… Just as you asked… Without the Book of Power… All up front, no tricks… And if you decide to get awkward… I’ll call my girls… They’re real craftswomen when it comes to torture… Oh, believe me…” Gorn suddenly turned serious. “There, you see, Alyoshka… And where are… your guarantees now?”

I hated Gorn and despised myself. In the morning I was still prepared to die in battle, and suddenly in half an hour I had lost all the resolve built up over six months. The explanation for it all was simple: I wasn’t daring by nature and the main motivation for my actions had always been shameful fear of what people around me would think. The reading room had perished, and I’d been left alone with my essential inner self—and that inner self didn’t want to die in battle, or under torture, and accepted any conditions in advance, simply in order to survive.

I tried to build up a stock of shame. When it appeared, I felt even more disgusted. I didn’t feel the kind of powerful, creative feeling that lifts the coward into the attack. It was the tearful morning-after repentance of the drunkard who has drunk away the money for his children’s bread—the feeble spasms of a puny conscience, which dissolve in that glass to cure the hangover.

I tried in vain to make myself abandon all the ruses and stupid hopes. I told myself that putting things off would only prolong the torture, exhorted myself to accept a worthy death: “They’ll kill you in any case. Before it’s too late, wring this old woman’s neck and die with dignity!”

The Book of Power had broken me fundamentally. I refused to listen to the voice of sombre truth, knowing in advance that I would give Gorn the insert that Margarita Tikhonovna had hidden in her photograph, and then I would wheedle and whine and try to squirm my way out of things.

“All right, Alyoshka…” said Gorn. “I’m not a spiteful woman… I’m warm-hearted. This is how we’ll do it… You’ll be the ‘grandson’. From now on, you’re not Vyazintsev. You’re Mokhov. We’ll keep your first name—Alyoshka. So as not to get confused. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven…”

“You look younger… About twenty-three… Alyoshka Mokhov… Born in 1978… Your story is this: Lizka gave you away as a baby… In the maternity home… And I found you… You are the legitimate heir… How’s that for a guarantee?” Gorn shuffled her beetling brows expressively. “And let’s dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s once and for all… So there won’t be any misunderstandings… No grudges… For what happened to your readers… If it wasn’t me, it would have been Lagudov or Shulga…You were doomed… No matter what… Accept it… You’ll be just fine with us. It’ll be nice and calm. If you start feeling down—we’ll find you a girlfriend. An old woman who’s a good housekeeper. About fifty years old… Don’t get nervous. I’m joking again… Let’s run through it one more time. Your name?”

“Alexei Mokhov,” I said, feeling on my skin the chill of the irrevocable crossing of another Rubicon. “But won’t we need documents too?”

“Don’t let that worry you… I still know some people. We’ll set you up with a passport… Don’t get distracted. What was your mother’s name?”

“Tatyana Andre—”

“Alexei! Don’t be stupid!” Gorn shouted art me. “She was called Yelizaveta Makarovna. Remember that well… You childhood was spent… Well? Answer!”

“In an orphanage.”

“Correct. Did you graduate from a college?”

“Two. A Polytechnic Institute and a —”

“The Polytechnic will do. A talented orphan… Alyoshka Mokhov… Grew up in an orphanage… Made his way, got on in life… Wonderful. And now tell me… Where did Rita stash the insert from the Book?”

“I think it’s in the back of the frame of Margarita Tikhonovna’s photograph…”

“And of course, the photograph has been lost…”

“No, it’s here.”

“Where, in the hut?” asked Gorn, looking round nervously. “Where? Did you hang it on the wall?”

“In my bag. With my personal things. In the porch, beside the trestle bed. It’s a big, check bag…”

“We’ll find it.”

“But I’m not absolutely certain. It’s an assumption…”

“Mashka! Mashka!” Gorn suddenly called in a piercing voice. Her orderly burst in, flinging the door open with a crash.

“Mashka! Stop!” said Gorn. Then, savouring my fright, she carried on in a quiet tone of voice: “Look in the porch. There was a check bag…”

“There’s a dozen of them,” the orderly boomed in a deep, hoarse voice. “It’s like a den of speculators…”

“Bring them here,” Gorn ordered, giving me a saucy wink. “You’ve done me proud, little grandson!”

PART III The Curator of the Motherland