The Commissariat of Enlightenment (18 page)

LEVIN
was an unjustifiably happy fat man, with a black leonine beard and rimless eyeglasses. A former pediatrician, he had come to Moscow from Petrograd after the Revolution and had established his small avant-garde theater without any official support or, it seemed, without any private financial support either. He moved in avant-garde circles and was friends with Mayakovsky, Vakhtangov, and the others. He was known to be an easy touch for hard-luck thespians and writers. The Commissariat kept a careful eye on the texts of his productions. When a play was forbidden, Levin cajoled, wheedled, and begged, often directly to Astapov, who was poorly disposed to live theater. Astapov liked Levin personally, but he saw that Levin was hurrying himself and his theater to a bad end.

Now Astapov was paging through a large black scrapbook in which were pasted publicity photographs and halftones depicting all the professional actors registered in the city of Moscow. This would have been Astapov’s obvious first step, if he hadn’t thought that Levin might have guessed his purpose. It appeared now that
Levin was indeed trying to surmise his interest in the casting books: his face was contorted in a grimace of worry. Astapov ignored him but the pictures, after the first twenty pages, began to dissolve in a blur. Most of them were of very poor quality.

“Would you like some tea? We haven’t any sugar, I’m afraid.”

“No, thank you,” Astapov replied, stifling the philanthropic impulse, after his unpleasant encounter on Arbat Street, to promise Levin some extra ration coupons.

Examining the photographs, he tried to imagine how the faces could be made up to suggest if not Stalin, then the proximity or indistinct presence of Stalin. At the same time he became aware that the actors had finally resumed rehearsing. He could hear them declaiming at each other and their speech was perfectly audible, but he could not distinguish their words. He was tired and realized now that working for two masters, Stalin and Enlightenment, meant at least twice the work. He shut his eyes, hearing only the weird argument in the auditorium.

When he opened them again, he said, “Boris Chipolovsky.” Chipolovsky, whose photograph had just appeared before him, was a square, solid man in his forties. The picture was of fair quality, perhaps even a trifle out of focus, and one of the edges had been torn. As Chipolovsky looked up from the page through these defects, he gave the impression of supreme self-confidence. Certainly no one had ever remarked the resemblance, but a thick black mustache would do the trick. Astapov wondered if he could obtain a cap like Stalin’s before tomorrow.

“A good man,” Levin said hurriedly, somewhat recklessly. Astapov could have just as likely been preparing to have Chipolovsky arrested. “He appeared at the Maly last season, in
The Dawn
.”

Astapov gazed for another minute at the picture and copied the actor’s address. He stood and went to the door of the office,
from where he could see the performers rehearse. They were shouting at each other, pacing the stage, and gesturing wildly with their scripts. He had arrived in the middle of a scene: their words still made no sense. “Extremely order social must class train!” declared Valeria, her jaw trembling with anger. The Armenian objected: “Why revolutionary which persecution peasantry soldiers?” The other man on the stage, a tall, fair Ukrainian who had made his comic reputation for his performance in
The Inspector General
at the Moscow Art Theater before the war, now interposed himself between the two, chuckling as he said, in a conciliatory manner, “Movement steel organize these can feel.” The fourth person on the stage, an older actress, tapped a foot impatiently. Astapov was bewildered. It was as if a screen of incomprehension had come down between him and the world—a screen that he had always known about and had always feared would fall. He stared at the actors, wondering if he had forever lost the capacity to extract meaning from the world.

These speculations extended for just another moment and then he said, “What is this shit?”

The actors stopped rehearsing and went limp as if they had been unplugged from the electric main. The scripts fell to their sides.

“It’s experimental theater!” said Levin, rushing up to Astapov. “It’s an experiment,” he repeated. His grin poorly masked his anxiety. “Comrade, the Revolution has established new social norms, indeed a new social reality shaped by language! The pace quickens: No generation in the history of the world has been exposed to so much language in so many varieties of transmission: newspapers, placards, broadsides, wireless…Every day we hear sentences that have never before been spoken on the face of the earth, new grammatical constructions denoting new political concepts. It’s vital that the Soviet people develop a language free of bourgeois re
straints. It’s revolutionary theater’s task to lead that effort. We’re trying to make our audience sensitive to this transformation by employing novel theatrical techniques.”

The actors had listened attentively to the director. They stood at the end of the stage, watching. Astapov had the fleeting sensation that his reaction had been anticipated and that Levin’s speech had been rehearsed. He noted that someone had cast a light on the office doorway, right where he was standing.

“Novel techniques,” Astapov repeated. “For instance?”

“Cacophony!” Levin said brightly. “
That’s
the medium for the masses, the noise of the news: words, words, words in collision. And our set design includes an eyeful of photographic and cinematic images, flashed above the heads of the actors.”

“But the language in your play makes no sense.”

“Exactly!”

“What?”

“We’ve mixed the words at random. We cut them out of today’s newspaper, put them in a candy box, then drew them out of the box one at a time, and pasted them into the script!”

Astapov shook his head sadly, mourning the profligate destruction of a newspaper. “And why did you do that?”

“To hear our language made new! Comrade, it’s been four years since October. The workers’ pace has slackened. Artists have become complacent. Already we’re becoming deaf to the
sound
of Revolution. When our Party leaders speak to the masses, we no longer hear or understand them.” Levin’s face had become red and moisture pearled on his forehead. Astapov nonetheless doubted his sincerity. “By creating a script from words placed in it by chance, by allowing randomness into our theater, we regain the attention of the proletariat.”

“But where is the meaning?”

“Meaning? We’re drowning in an overabundance of meaning!” Levin saw the alarmed look on Astapov’s face but went on, unable to help himself. “Comrade Astapov, every day we’re buffeted by thousands of messages in the papers, in our eyes, coming at us on waves of radio-electromagnetism! It’s a cacophony of
experience
! Our play dramatizes the individual’s predicament, with so many experiences to choose from. Each member of the audience will have the opportunity to discover unintentional meanings within the rearranged sentences.”

Astapov said angrily, “And what if these meanings are counterrevolutionary?”

“Counterrevolutionary?” Levin blinked in surprise.

“Or ironic. Or satirical in some way. What if the audience
chooses
a counterrevolutionary meaning? Don’t you see, you’ve lost control of the story. This is the
opposite
of a story. What you have here can mean
anything!
The audience might
laugh!”

Astapov strode onto the stage to emphasize his decision to the actors, who were at least more sensible about their careers than Levin was. Levin’s play wouldn’t be the first artistic project he had canceled this past month: hunger, cold, and the first lengthening spring days had apparently driven Moscow’s creative workers to madness. The artistic manifestos were piling up faster than he could read them, if it had been possible to read them at all. Astapov suffered no qualmish tremors in blocking unsuitable art. The real challenge lay in getting the correct works produced. You couldn’t count on individual artists, certainly not on idiot-individualists like Yelena Bogdanova and Fyodor Levin, who, for all their protestations, denied the logic of history. For a revolution to be victorious, to change the manner of human thought, it would have to make sense out of history’s disorder. Enlightenment’s principal task was to create the story, this monument to the future.
A steady hand would carve it from the misshapen, stupid stone of Russian culture, specifically its myth, religion, and folk wisdom. For years he had labored to do this; censoring Levin’s ridiculous sketch was easy.

He was dimly aware that the spotlight was following him.

“Forget it,” he announced. “This play will not be performed. Nothing like it will ever be allowed. It’s completely out of the question.” Astapov pointed to Levin. “And if you’re smart you won’t even submit it to the Commissariat. You’ll be risking your theater.”

Neither Levin nor the actors seemed surprised by Astapov’s outburst. They looked at their shoes like truant schoolboys.

Astapov said, “I trust you to properly dispose of the scripts. What I mean is, you’ll have to burn them. And, tell me, what was the basis for the script? From where did you tear those words?”

“Today’s
Izvestia
,” Levin said.

“Izvestia,”
Astapov murmured.

“A speech by Comrade Stalin to the union of sheetmetal workers…We didn’t mean any offense…”

Astapov felt something pulling at his arm, like a string. He shook away the feeling, there was nothing there. He wondered whether he had just been tested and whether his response had meant success or failure.

“Burn the scripts,” Astapov repeated. “Better yet, tear them apart and put the words back into their original sequence.” He said this without irony or humor: he wished this earnestly. As he stormed out of the theater, a spectral part of him remained a few paces behind, listening for the applause.

IN
the end, Chipolovsky needed to be arrested. He had not been home when Astapov called and the neighbors proved unhelpful, all the while making elaborate demonstrations of their concern and willingness to help. The Cheka found him within two hours in the Sukharevka market, where he was blusteringly negotiating for some shriveled cucumbers.

Despite a lip bloodied by an overenthusiastic Chekist, Chipolovsky appeared undisturbed by his arrest and unafraid of the man to whose office he had been brought. Astapov marveled at the fine choice he had made with only a photograph as recommendation. No one would ever mistake Chipolovsky for Stalin. For one thing, he was Jewish, not Caucasian, and his face was not quite as square or rough-skinned. He had no mustache. Yet like Stalin’s, Chipolovsky’s eyes suggested a generous capacity for human warmth as well as boundless craftiness—and an implacable will. Very few men in Astapov’s experience managed to convey all that in a single glance.

“This is the Commissariat of Enlightenment,” the actor observed placidly.

“And not the Lubyanka,” Astapov conceded, and then added, with deliberate ambiguity, “But the Cheka’s rules of hospitality remain in effect.”

He allowed several moments to pass, in order to consider the actor’s apparent confidence. Perhaps it was a bluff. There was no dossier on him and Astapov could only guess at his political and social background. Who were his friends? Where were his sympathies? Could he be trusted with a delicate assignment? Chipolovsky remained unmoved by Astapov’s intense regard.

Astapov asked, “Have you ever considered a career in the cinema?”

The actor couldn’t suppress his smile of relief at this turn in the interview. Stalin, of course, would never have allowed such an expression to emerge from beneath his mustache. Now Astapov himself let out some air, relieved, too, by this confirmation that the Cheka had not, by some mistake or coincidence or numinous conspiracy, arrested Stalin.

“I prefer the theater.”

“The theater is dead,” Astapov said. “It’s an antiquated, bourgeois institution. It no longer suits our revolutionary era, which has been made incandescent by electricity. Culture has to serve the masses. It’s a waste of state funds to produce individual shows that only a few hundred can see at a time when it’s possible to present in a single evening the same film to thousands of workers and peasants across the country. It’s careless to allow a stage drama to be performed every night without Party supervision, subject to the vagaries and treacheries of individual actors and directors, when it’s possible to make a perfect film that will be perfect every time it’s shown.”

Chipolovsky studied the Bolshevik official, who had not yet introduced himself. At last he replied, smiling faintly, “I suppose this is a good time then to consider a career in the cinema.”

Astapov said, “You’ve been selected to appear in a film being produced for the Commissariat of Enlightenment. It’s an historical agit-drama, about the storming and seizure of the Moscow Kremlin in October 1917.”

In fact the seizure of the Kremlin hadn’t taken place until November 1917, and it had been largely a symbolic act, more than a week after the Bolsheviks’ coup in Petrograd. The fortress had been absent of temporal power for the past two centuries, ever since the tsars’ decampment to the north. The Bolsheviks had made it the seat of government in the months following the Revolution, when, fearing German occupation of Petrograd, they hurriedly returned the country’s capital to Moscow.

“And what’s my role?” Chipolovsky asked.

“Your role…” Astapov paused, ready to gauge Chipolovsky’s reaction. “Your role is to play Comrade Stalin.”

“But Comrade Stalin wasn’t in Moscow. He was in Petrograd. Everyone knows that.”

“Exactly. I didn’t say you’ll play the principal role. You’ll be no more than a supernumerary, an extra, filmed in the background and at the edge of the screen, during the storming of the Trinity Gate from the Alexander Gardens. Perhaps your actual time in the film will amount to five or six seconds, perhaps not even a hundred frames in total. You won’t be made up to look exactly like Stalin. You’ll merely suggest his presence, and perhaps not even his physical presence. Comrade Stalin, Ilich’s closest confidant, was and remains a
moral
force behind the Revolution, and your role is meant to convey the
idea
of his participation in the crucial Moscow events.”

“I see.”

Chipolovsky’s wariness made Astapov wonder whether he would have difficulty with the actor. Should he have chosen someone happily oblivious to recent history? Stalin had been in Petrograd at the time of the October Revolution, to his credit, but even there his actions had been largely incidental. During the days and nights in the Smolny girls school where Ilich, Trotsky, Bukharin, and Zinoviev had planned the insurrection against the Provisional Government, Stalin had been elsewhere, in the Moika district, writing editorials for the Party newspaper. Chipolovsky probably knew this as well as Astapov, as a
fact,
and the actor probably held conventional attitudes toward the primacy of facts. It was a kind of superstition, really, that the world was constructed from tiny atoms of invariant, unshiftable facts. This pseudo-materialistic view excised man from the landscape. It presumed that although he was now capable of seizing electricity and light in his hands, he could not exert on history the power of human reason.

Astapov said, “If your performance is successful, you may be selected for other roles of this kind.”

“I’ll need a cap,” the actor declared.

“I thought the right mustache—”

“No,” said Chipolovsky firmly. “A mustache is too obvious. Get me the cap. Perhaps Iosif Vissarionovich would be so kind…”

Astapov was about to deny Stalin’s involvement in the project, but he gave up the pretense. Now he was sure: Chipolovsky was the right man for the part.