The Commissariat of Enlightenment (10 page)

THE
thump at the door early that morning came without a password. They all lay still, waiting, and then the door was nearly knocked off its hinges. A voice called, “It’s me, for God’s sake, fucking Stalin!”

Ivanov’s host, the widower, was bewildered by these visitors’ stamina and daring, the debate, the arguments, the rush of mysterious strangers at his threshold. The pock-faced man who called himself Stalin strode in as if on a stage, turning from side to side to give everyone a good look at him. Ivanov was furious. Ivanov’s wife nearly spat. They had spent a restless night on the stove. The young man, Bobkin, rushed past Stalin to the window and pulled back an edge of the lace curtain. He was sure that their arrest was imminent. The widower, whose name was Pyotr Yegoryevich, knew that his own life had never before been in such danger. He wished that the Count would die already, so that Russia could return to normal.

“You’ve broken revolutionary discipline,” Ivanov announced, scowling. He was already dressed and sitting at his makeshift desk, looking like a granary clerk. “You’ve risked the entire movement.
What if we’re seized or killed? How do you know you weren’t followed to this very house? You were meant to remain in Siberia until you received further instructions!”

“It was cold.”

Ivanov put his fist down on the table. “Why did you come? I know! You think the time is right for a putsch, and you’re hoping to lead it without the Party! Am I right?”

Stalin removed his boots and coat. He said to the widower, “If I could trouble you for some tea…”

Pyotr Yegoryevich rushed to the samovar, relieved to have been given a task. The newcomer rested at the bench near the stove and took out his pipe. He withdrew a small bag from his pants pocket and poured some brown tobacco into the bowl. Taking great care, he tamped it and lit the pipe. Soon a stale, acrid odor filled the room.

“My dear Vladimir Ilich Len—”

Mrs. Ivanova hastily corrected him: “Ivanov.”

“My dear Vladimir Ilich Ivanov. It would be suicide to lead a putsch without the Party’s support, and the workers are not prepared,” Stalin said. “In any event, there are too many Christians underfoot to make any kind of putsch. But mass demonstrations against the regime are likely, and it’ll be useful to have a Party presence, don’t you agree? And isn’t that why you’re here, Mr. Ivanov? To encourage a strike or a march, and to make sure that someone—not you, of course—raises the red flag? To observe firsthand. To learn about the disposition of political forces. I presume that we’ve come for the same purposes.” Stalin’s smile now widened. “Let’s not argue, comrade.”

“So you’ve come. What have you learned?” Ivanov asked sullenly.

“I’ve been to the train station,” Stalin said, suppressing any
note of rebuke. The words were enough to make the point that Ivanov hadn’t stirred from the house since his arrival in Astapovo. “It’s a remarkable sight for such a remote place: pilgrims, prophets, journalists, cameramen, telegraphic messages flying off to all the capitals of the world. Right now there’s no place in Russia so solidly located in the twentieth century. This is a revolutionary time. And I observe, too, that we’ve entered a religious moment.”

Ivanov replied, “Religion
‘ist das Opium des Volks!’
”

Stalin nodded thoughtfully, as if it were the first time he had heard this. He mused, “But, comrade, in many instances doctors prescribe opium in good conscience. And if you’ve come to Astapovo to observe these current events, you have to remark the strong hold religion exerts upon the masses. Look at the price of bread. Of milk. Look at the wretchedness woven into the fabric of Russian existence. The people know nothing better. They’ve been sustained for centuries by the expectation of a better life in the next world. Do you think, come the revolution, that the masses will so easily give up this hope and the habits of religious veneration? As the Party prepares for the revolution, we can’t dismiss the place of religion in Russian life.”

“Socio-mythico-pathology! God-building! Fedorovism! Heresy!”

For whose conversion were they arguing? Four men and a single woman occupied the room. Ivanov’s wife and Ivanov’s companion Bobkin would have to take Ivanov’s side. That left only the widower—who could barely understand the argument. He wasn’t flattered by the apparent struggle for his favor. He was increasingly convinced that he was host to a convocation of lunatics.

“Not at all,” Stalin said. “I don’t propose that we adopt Christianity or any of the teachings based on the writings of that broken-down fool, that failed saint, the Count. But if you spend
time on the Astapovo station platform and witness the passions stirred by the Count’s presence—the
idea,
the
symbol
of the Count—you’ll understand that the masses need something to worship. They
love
the Count, much more than they love the ideas and symbols of revolutionary socialism.” Stalin shook his head sadly. “Comrade, the masses don’t see much difference between socialism and the Count’s teachings—love thy neighbor and all that other crap. But that’s our opportunity: in the right hands, the Count can be transformed into a revolutionary hero or, better yet, a martyr!”

“A martyr?” Ivanov sputtered. “To what? Harridan wives? Unheated third-class coaches?”

Stalin sipped his tea, and turned toward the peasant. “Comrade, may I trouble you for a good Russian biscuit?” Pyotr Yegoryevich scurried off to the larder. “Comrade Ivanov, the story has to be told in a way that reflects revolutionary truth. The facts of his death are irrelevant. But it can be shown, if it’s in our class interests to do so, that our movement is a development and modernization of the Count’s teachings. We may derive our moral authority from the Count.”

Ivanov covered his ears. “What am I hearing? We derive our moral authority from the scientific study of history!”

“The masses require faith. Comrade, socialism can meet that need, with its own sectarian practices honoring the principles of science. We may endow revolutionary socialism with its own distinctive rituals, a liturgy, socialist holidays—and a pantheon of great socialist men. The Count may be placed in our empyrean—”

Ivanov shouted, “No, no, no! A thousand times no! This is god-building. I disproved the idea of god-building in my book,
Materialism and Empiriocriticism
! Haven’t you read it? The Central Committee has voted on it! Our editorial board has de
clared god-building a ‘distortion of scientific socialism.’ Any belief in god, whatever that god’s identity, is nothing more than necrophilia!”

Now something peculiar happened. As if his face had just been slapped, Stalin suddenly dropped his head. It might have been the words,
Central Committee.
His eyelids became heavy and he stared at the bare wooden floor, abjectly. He had no answer. The widower marveled at the transformation. He didn’t trust it, of course, but with these gentlemen, anything was possible…

At last Stalin murmured, “You’re absolutely right…I studied the book, of course, but perhaps not with sufficient attention. I have to go back to my notes.” With the apology completed, his face brightened. Pyotr Yegoryevich wondered if he were mocking Ivanov; if so, it was done not quite openly enough for Ivanov to justify taking offense, even if he were privately offended. Why would Stalin mock him? Was it for
his,
Pyotr Yegoryevich’s benefit? This was all too strange, yet the widower was dimly aware that these gentlemen were maneuvering for power over each other, through
him,
through an argument about ideas. It was a foolish new century, in which arguments about ideas would shape the destinies of even simple men like himself. Stalin added, “Well, at least my journey to Astapovo wasn’t a total waste…”

Ivanov announced, “It was worse than wasteful, it was hare-brained.”

“I’ve learned something. I’ve recruited somebody.”

Ivanov studied the Caucasian for a few moments. He glanced over at Bobkin, who had listened to this confrontation in open-mouthed astonishment. Bobkin had never before met anyone quite as insolent as Stalin. Ivanov could have him expelled from the Party leadership. If he didn’t have him expelled, it was because he had guessed at something necessary in him.

“What have you learned? Who have you recruited?”

“A reliable young man, a cinematographer for Pathé Frères, a Russian. The French are making moving pictures at the train station.”

“What’s his class background? Why do we need him?”

Stalin leaned back on the bench and drew deeply from his pipe.

“He understands the cinema and its revolutionary potential. He knows how to assemble facts into something useful.”

“What facts?”

“Oh,” Stalin said, affecting a casual air. “All sorts of facts: picture-facts, word-facts, half-facts, former facts, future facts, unfacts, facts to be drawn from the ether. Facts that are still in generation through event and circumstance. Facts that are not facts—that are, in fact, lies—until they’re in the service of revolution. The boy will be handy.”

Ivanov grimaced, as if a flow of bile had just reached his palate. He didn’t say anything for a while and then his disposition changed, almost abruptly. He was still unsmiling and his eyes gazed at Stalin no less penetratingly, but even the widower recognized a new, nearly indulgent element in his demeanor. Ivanov reached for his absent beard. Bobkin had been right: Ivanov saw something necessary in Stalin.

“In the meantime,” Ivanov declared. “You go back to Siberia.”

ALL
that day the Count’s health weakened and the pulse that was his most readily measurable sign of life became erratic. Before lunchtime the Countess again appealed to be allowed entry to the stationmaster’s house, especially now that the Count was unconscious. What harm would it do him? Would they deny her salve for a broken heart? This time Sasha wouldn’t even open the door. The Countess saw Dr. Makovitsky on his way to the news briefing and cried, “Dushan! Have pity on an old woman! Do no harm!” He skittered away. Now surrounded by doctors from Moscow and Berlin, Makovitsky seemed to have been reminded that he was no more than a provincial physician. He had been foolish to have allowed the Count to leave Yasnaya Polyana. As his patient lay dying, his answers to the reporters’ questions were diminished to a mumble.

Chertkov’s presence was much more evident now, gaining vitality as the Count’s ebbed. He left the house to speak to officials and delegations of disciples; telegrams were dispatched to warn the Count’s vast and diffuse empire of his imminent demise, as well as to establish Chertkov’s own primacy at the scene. Despite
the primitiveness of the local facilities, Chertkov was always dressed with care, a European from head to toe. Meyer duly photographed him: Chertkov’s name, flashed in an intertitle, would be recognized in London and Paris. Chertkov knew, of course, that he was being photographed, but unlike the Countess he was able to pass through the camera frame without acknowledging the camera, not even conceding a glance to the lens.

A former officer of the Russian Imperial Army, Chertkov crossed the length of the station platform in long, resolute strides. Gribshin came to doubt the usefulness of approaching him on his own: Chertkov would count him as no more than a boy. Gribshin turned to Meyer, who was photographing some carousing gypsies. Two gaily robed women and a man with a guitar had assembled themselves at the camera’s focus. Gribshin told Meyer about Vorobev’s scheme in an offhand way, as if it were a joke.

Meyer barely heard him and continued to film the gypsies. He had been filming Russian gypsies for two years now. European audiences loved “Oriental scenes,” despite the ubiquity of their own gypsy entertainers and pickpockets, and despite the failure of the cinematograph camera to convey either its subjects’ color or their song. Meyer was photographing idly now, waiting for the Astapovo drama’s denouement. The delay of the funeral had made Paris impatient.

Still turning the film, Meyer said now, “He embalms rats?”

“He wants to embalm the Count.”

The cameraman laughed. He took great pleasure in the Russians, he enjoyed this wild country. “Lovely,” he said. “Lovely.”

“Can we introduce him to Chertkov?”

Meyer shrugged. As always, the gypsies had moved on without asking the Pathé crew for money. Although none had ever been to the cinema, they understood that within the machine some
process was working to make them stand as tall as a house, all over Europe. Like men and women of other nations and other times, they were satisfied that they had profited from the transaction.

“Does he really think Chertkov will agree?”

“The professor’s an insistent fellow,” said Gribshin.

Meyer considered the idea but would not make a commitment to it. As the afternoon passed he became engrossed in a running telegraphic conversation with his man in Tula. The subject was the Count’s funeral. The Count intended to have himself buried at his favorite place on his estate, in the Zakaz forest at the edge of a ravine. As children, he and his brother had fancied that the meaning of life had been inscribed somehow on a green stick and that the stick had been secretly deposited within the ravine. The whole world knew of the stick now. Trying to acquire in advance an unobstructed view of the spot, Meyer was too busy to talk to Vorobev.

Gribshin was disappointed. He had come to like Vorobev. Throughout the rest of the day, the professor lingered near the cameras, waiting for an introduction.

Vorobev never gave up hope, even if Gribshin had. The professor watched the door to the stationmaster’s house. The Count’s physicians, some of the Count’s children, and countless numbers of his disciples continually passed through it. Late in the day as the sun’s rays burst out from beneath a low bank of clouds, casting the brick in vividly sanguine hues, Chertkov himself emerged.

He walked over to the Pathé crew. No cameras were rolling now. The man’s eyes were set deep and his face was drawn. This approach to the camera had required some lengthy, possibly painful consideration.

Meyer stirred, stiffening his frame. The cinematographer pre
ferred to badger his subjects, rather than have them come to him directly.

“Sir,” Chertkov addressed Meyer.

“At your service, Vladimir Grigoryevich.”

Stooping slightly, Chertkov contemplated the cinematograph camera as if trying to comprehend its mechanism. The mechanism was indeed not simple; Gribshin knew it intimately. Inside the mahogany cabinet lay two magazines for holding the film before and after it was exposed. The film was pulled from one magazine to the other by a hand-crank located on the right side of the cabinet. Tiny sprockets that seized the film’s perforated margins threaded it through a series of rollers so that it passed behind a single-element 50mm f/4.5 lens at the rate of sixteen frames per second. The crank activated the lens shutter as it turned the film. These workings were invisible to Chertkov. In the remaining twenty-six years of his life, opaque boxes containing arcane machinery would become increasingly abundant.

At last Chertkov said, “The Count is not expected to last the night.”

“On behalf of Pathé Frères…” Meyer began, but his voice trailed off. Chertkov had not come for Meyer’s condolences.

“A special car has been commissioned to return the Count to Yasnaya Polyana,” Chertkov explained in a dull, metallic voice. “Four pallbearers will carry the coffin from the house to the train, the Count’s sons Sergei, Ilya, Andrei, and Michael. I will walk directly behind the coffin. Behind me will follow those members of the immediate family that are fit to participate. I estimate that the distance from the stationmaster’s house to the car can be covered in ninety seconds.”

“We’ll be prepared,” Meyer declared.

“The Countess,” Chertkov began. He stopped as if to reconsider what he was going to say, but the hesitation was rehearsed. “The Countess is quite distraught. The family prefers that she not be photographed in this condition.”

Or in any condition, Gribshin surmised. That was the main purpose of Chertkov’s approach, to remove the Count’s wife from the frame of the screen, in the least unseemly way possible.

Meyer asked, “Is there any hope that we can be allowed to photograph the Count inside the stationmaster’s house?”

“I can’t say,” Chertkov replied tentatively, unsure whether a quid pro quo was about to be suggested. To avoid such a proposal, he turned to leave. Meyer grimaced.

“Sir!” Gribshin called out.

Chertkov halted. He hadn’t noticed the young man, nor the older man with the large black bag who had materialized beside him.

“Vladimir Grigoryevich,” Gribshin said in a hurry. “Before you go, I wish to present Professor Vorobev, a doctor of medicine and a keen promoter of the Count’s ideas.”

Chertkov nodded and indifferently took Vorobev’s hand. The professor had organized a severe expression on his face, as if to make Chertkov sense that he was being judged. Unsure of whom he was meeting, Chertkov glanced over at Meyer, who nodded soberly in return.

“The Count is receiving excellent care,” Chertkov said.

“He is now, Vladimir Grigoryevich,” Vorobev replied softly. Then he stopped and looked severely again at Chertkov. “But what medical care will he be receiving a day from now, a week from now, a year or even a century hence?”

Chertkov stared at the professor, apparently not registering his words. Vorobev handed him his visiting card.

The professor went on, his speech booming. “Vladimir Grigoryevich, I’m sure that you’re aware in a general way of the organic processes that occur within the human body after a man’s death. Muscle proteins swiftly coagulate, stiffening the corpse. The pancreas digests itself. Gas released by colonal bacteria bloats the body and may force the intestine out through the rectum. In my research I have quantified one hundred and six discrete organic phenomena associated with death. My papers have been reviewed by experts in the field and published in some of Europe’s leading medical journals.”

“Sir,” said Chertkov, trying now to break away. But Vorobev held his hand and somehow kept his gaze. The professor had prominent, bright eyes, which flashed now almost feverishly. Chertkov said, “This is extremely distasteful to me, especially today. A man I love, to whom I have dedicated my life, lies in that house—”

“Distasteful! Of course it is, sir. The greatest literary mind of the nineteenth century is doomed to die and decay and be devoured by worms in the twentieth! Sir, I am appalled by the lack of respect being shown the Count on his deathbed. But this is the state of the world today, alas. We defile our dying and neglect our dead.”

Chertkov had become pale and his upper lip twitched as if pierced by an electric current.

“We’re doing all we can for the Count. Excuse me, I must go now.”

Vorobev put his hand on Chertkov’s arm.

“Vladimir Grigoryevich, what better monument to a great man’s life than the man himself?
Here
is the man who wrote the books,
here
is the man who plowed the fields with his serfs,
here
is the man who challenged the authority of established religion! He
lived! Two thirds of the Russian population are illiterate. Peasants can’t read the Count’s books. I myself am a very busy man and have only a passing knowledge of them. But the public can understand what the Count stands for. To win that understanding you must show the Count himself, you must demonstrate that he was once a real man.”

The chief disciple snapped, “Everyone knows that he’s a real man.”

Vorobev chortled—obnoxiously, Gribshin thought. “Do they? Will they know that a century or ten centuries from tomorrow? Aren’t there those who dispute that Christ once lived and walked among the people? Can you not imagine that the Count’s own existence will someday be disputed?”

Chertkov said, “I don’t understand who you are or what you’re proposing.”

The professor smiled benignly.

“I am a professor of medicine, sir, a scientist of some renown and achievement. What I propose is nothing less than the permanent chemical preservation of the Count’s body, for the purpose of perpetuating his thought and ideals.”

It was impossible to read the expression on Chertkov’s face. As Vorobev spoke his eyes had darkened. Chertkov appeared to have withdrawn deeply into himself and become deaf and blind to the professor and the Pathé crew, the cinematographic equipment, and the passersby. Gribshin wondered if Chertkov was trying to communicate with the Count telepathically.

Chertkov spoke after a few moments. “How will you do that?”

“Through an advanced biological technique, developed in my laboratory.”

“You propose to stuff him?”

Now it was Vorobev’s turn to appear pained.

“I’m surprised, Vladimir Grigoryevich, to hear those words of prejudice fall from your lips. The Count’s life has been distinguished by his open-mindedness, which has served you and his other associates as well. My approach is purely scientific, it has nothing to do with…
stuffing.
”

Vorobev dropped his arm, sure that Chertkov would not go. Indeed, the chief disciple had now turned to face Vorobev squarely. He appraised the professor for the first time, wondering if he could use him. Gribshin recognized in Chertkov the same imperial ambition as he had seen in the other man, the Caucasian stranger. The Caucasian was keeping himself distant today, yet Gribshin sensed that he was, somehow, auditing the conversation.

Chertkov said, “It’s through the written word that we spread the truth lived by the Count’s life. We’ve printed millions of pamphlets and broadsheets containing the Count’s most important writings. We give them away or sell them for a kopeck apiece.”

The professor smiled. “Yes, I’ve seen them strewn on the floor of the waiting room here in Astapovo. Do not take offense, Vladimir Grigoryevich, scientists deal bluntly with the facts. Instead, consider how many of our devout Russian peasants have ever read the Sermon on the Mount. How many of them understand when it’s read to them aloud? They’re considered Christians and look how they live, like savages, like pagans! Ninety-five percent of Christianity—wait, 99.9 percent!—is simply the authority of the Church, as symbolized by its physical edifices, by the sacraments, and the vestments, and the liturgy.”

Chertkov’s expression eased. He was on familiar ground now and spoke in quiet, measured tones.

He said, “And this is precisely against what the Count has rebelled. As a Christian, he’s sought nothing more than to make people understand Christ’s message of love and charity. This is
why he’s been at odds with the Church authorities, who have distorted and corrupted Christ’s teachings with their own discipline, to maintain their power. This is why the Count was excommunicated and why he won’t reconcile himself with the Church. The Count, you know, refused this morning to accept the Church’s last rites. His least desire would be yet another church, built around his own person.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Vorobev responded, enthusiastically wagging his head. “He’s right, of course. But why have Christians strayed from the essence of Christian thought? Because Christ himself has been banished from the Church. If you seek to have the Count’s influence survive his living self, you will need to do more than print broadsheets. Look at Russia today: the poverty, the ignorance, the brutality! Russia needs the Count’s presence more than ever. You and your colleagues must go forth across Russia and speak to the peasants directly. You must read them the Gospels, you must read them the Count’s parables, you must speak to them from your own heart and from your own faith. But will they listen? What sort of audiences can you expect?”