The Commissariat of Enlightenment (4 page)

He became aware that he was standing before a portrait of the Mother of God, located off the central hall and illuminated by an overhead lamp. Soot had softened the figure’s features and dimmed her halo, also known as the glory. She was pictured alone without the Infant and with her facial expression closed. This was typical: all the saints were depicted with unnatural obscurity. The forceful assertion of their humanness, Anton had once explained, would have denied their divinity. This Mother, however, revealed an intimately human sorrow in her gaze, emanating from profoundly dark eyes. She grieved not simply for her Son’s life, but for all the misfortune that ran beneath our existence, made so evident in the course of Kolya’s journey through provincial Russia. The schoolmistress Masha sat abandoned in her miserable kitchen and now Kolya was vibrated by a chord of sympathy between them. Although he had been aware that sympathy was precisely the response that his father had hoped their travels would elicit from
him, Kolya had not comprehended the depths of feeling sympathy was capable of stirring nor the extent to which it could provoke his identification with another person. His cheeks flushed.

The painting’s eyes arrested him just as he was about to turn away. Their subtly iridescent pupils were where the anonymous artist had subverted the form, using some trick of line and color to breathe life into the resolutely two-dimensional figure. The eyes sought him within his fevered confusion and lifted and drew him out of it.

Now he became aware that the icon glistened, reflecting and magnifying the lamplight. The artist had done something to the surface of the painting that produced the illusion of wetness, adding to the image’s fecund carnality. If you stared at the icon long enough, as Kolya did, benumbed and distracted, it appeared that the gleam was moving down the Mother of God’s face. His own skin burned in parallel, as if streaked by hot oil. He saw or thought he saw a blister raised on the wood, shivering in the chapel’s air currents: a teardrop. Yes, it was a tear. It swelled tremulously, doubting its own existence. She wept. He reached out, penetrating the plane of the image, and his fingers came away wet, or what he thought of as wet.

A tear.

The boy was just fourteen, a moment that amplified every emotional sensation. He remained by the icon for the next half hour until his father and the priest returned. Time swirled around his figure. He realized afterward that he had been in prayer, or whatever it was like praying that didn’t require either the formulation of words or conscious supplication.

Within a few days they returned home, Kolya almost speechless. He resumed his classes at the gymnasium. His father returned to his study to brood and possibly despair about their debts and
expenses. Yet Kolya didn’t believe that he had returned to Moscow in full. His body was overcome by chills from time to time and he attended his lessons and the affairs of their household as if his head were wrapped in a towel. He kept secret the miracle of the tearful icon. He could not yet comprehend how he was supposed to take up his old life as a schoolboy, nor how he should respond to this invitation to divine grace.

His father somehow intuited that the boy was disturbed. He was not normally disposed to consider Kolya’s moods, nor even to notice him around the house. The youth kept out of his way, for the most part. But he recalled now that he had found the boy standing agape at the icon in the church in Bokino and that he had remarked it as strange at the time. He had been too deep in his conversation with Father Mikhail, a surprisingly worldly young cleric, to give it a second thought. He ran his memory through the events of that day.

“Masha Tupakova,” he guessed.

Kolya blushed, if only from hearing the schoolmistress’s name pronounced so casually. He hadn’t known her surname. He was angry that his father had fired so unerringly, as if Kolya’s heart were as wide as a commercial signboard. At the same time his father was damnably, infuriatingly wrong; his father believed that he was suffering from some banal romantic infatuation. Well, how could he know about the Mother of God in Bokino? About that trembling teardrop? Kolya was awed by his secret.

“A clever girl,” Anton Nikolayevich said after a while, bobbing his head sagaciously. “In the end, she’ll make out all right for herself.”

Kolya didn’t reply, contemplating the future for Masha his father had predicted so vaguely but authoritatively. Anton studied him, taking some very small satisfaction in apparently solving the
problem, and immediately lost interest in his son’s sentimentality. He himself had gone to bed with Masha Tupakova the year before, and next year he would not bring the boy so that he could do so again. Now he wished to return to his study; within the hour he would be obliged to bring his wife her chamomile. But the boy stood there dumbly, neither thanking him for his perspicacity nor seeking to be dismissed, and Anton felt awkward again, as he often did in this dingy, cramped, frayed, overmortgaged house. He missed the road; the boy had been better company on the road. Here the boy obliged him to make conversation.

“I don’t know if you noticed this or not,” Anton began, “but that icon in the church in Bokino enjoys a very peculiar reputation. You have to look at it carefully and put yourself in the proper frame of mind I suppose, but it often appears that Saint Mary is weeping, that actual tears are running down her face. You can touch them. Pilgrims come from all over. They swear by it. The number of cures credited to the Bokino Mother of God far exceeds the number claimed by the government medical clinic in Tambov, can you imagine? The illusion is produced by two small reservoirs of water fixed to the back of the painting, which has microscopic grooves drilled through the eyes. You can’t see the holes, not in that light. On my visit last year Father Mikhail showed me how it worked.” Anton added, smiling benevolently, “It keeps his church full! The icon’s spawning imitators of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if every parish in the province has a Weeping Mother of God by next year.”

Kolya wasn’t surprised by the explanation.
Of course
that was the explanation, he had known it all the time, and the recollection that he once believed otherwise was fantastic and a humiliation of such extent that it would never be expunged or redeemed, no
matter what. He had needed to believe, that’s what was so disgraceful, a defect in his character. Yet other men shared this defect.

His father turned to go and then stopped for a moment to think. He said, “There’s no miracle in Bokino, of course, no miracle in the religious sense. But think, son, of the genius who first came up with this deception. I don’t mean the water reservoir only. Consider the entire structure of myth, superstition, and faith, and especially storytelling, that makes such a deception possible. That’s genius, that’s the closest we’ll ever get to divinity. Now you’ll excuse me. I need to do some work in my study.”

In Meyer’s employ Gribshin would travel more widely through Russia than Anton did (his father continued to make his annual rounds, returning home with accounts of the schools’ steady progress) and the young man had many occasions to be repulsed by the stupidity of religion and the cynicism of its ecclesiarchs. Entering the century’s second decade, the country was still mired in backwardness and you could see it in every cripple begging in every muddy village square, in the unmechanized, miserly fields seen from the road, and here, in the old post-house, in every bit of faded woodwork, floral embroidery, chipped pottery, and in every crack veining the walls. As he lay awake, Gribshin sensed that every atom in the room was charged with Russian indolence.

Gribshin despised the lurid glare that had enveloped the train station, yet the cinematography equipment, the circus tent, and the press car were located in the place where men lived in society and worked and argued and advanced their interests. It was the modern world. The disorderly house in which he would sleep tonight, this Russia to which he had mindlessly fled, was some kind of distant, errant planetoid. He would have liked to dash this rock to pieces.

LESS
than 300 meters from Gribshin’s post-house in a house made from logs, another visitor sat at a roughly hewn wooden table, and before him lay a sheaf of papers on which many figures had been carefully tabulated. He was a diminutive bald man whose little red beard had been shaved in Paris. He scowled and from time to time rubbed his chin. Although proud of his lack of vanity, he missed the beard. A bowl of mushroom soup congealed at the edge of the table. Behind him a stout woman looked over his shoulder down at the writing tablet. The only light visible on her grim, obdurate features seemed to be that reflected off the man’s skull.

Today the floorboards had been paced as heavily as they might have been at a wake. The house’s regular tenant, an old widower, was stationed in a corner by an icon garishly depicting the apostles. He was barely able to keep his eyes open after this past tumultuous day. Bobkin, the young man who had accompanied the secretive couple to the house that morning, stood by their side. A representative of the local proletariat, Tarass, tall and thin and wearing his best clothes, had just arrived with the papers.

“District council participation,” announced the little man at the table, who had eased through the porous membrane of exile under the name Ivanov. He peered at the figures. “Rather strong; I’ve already proven that strong district council participation portends successful peasant mobilization. Above-average rural adult literacy. Land rental rates considerably below Tula’s—why is that? Churches. Bath houses. Cinema houses…” He stopped and, without lifting his head, asked the fellow: “Are these production figures recent?”

“I copied them from a commercial almanac, your honor.”

“Published in what year? There’s no date referenced.” Now he fixed his stern gaze on the worker, his eyes like lit coals. “Is it 1910? 1900? The Year 1? Does the pig iron output refer to the age when plankton ruled the earth? This is useless!”

Tarass reddened. He mumbled, “It was recent…”

The woman was even angrier than her husband—not only affronted, but suspicious. The worker’s suit, cheaply made but neatly cared for, seemed too much like exactly what you would expect from a rural cadre hoping to make a good impression. The government’s agents were everywhere. Ivanov slapped the desk. “The date, man! The date!”

“I will get it for you, I swear I will.”

Ivanov hardly softened his gaze or relaxed his expression, but he waited a moment for the worker to catch his breath.

“What’s your name, comrade?”

“Arkady Borisovich Tarass. I’m a tanner by trade, formerly at the Leskov industrial concern in Lipetsk-town…”

“When did you join the Party?”

“The Red October, your honor. Oh-five. I was on the strike committee at the plant.”

“Ah, yes, the Leskov strike.” For the first time in their conver
sation, Ivanov spread his lips and showed his teeth. This was his smile. “I understand that the gendarmes cracked some heads.”

“And we cracked a few of theirs, sir, if you beg my pardon.”

As a matter of fact, in 1905, at the time of the aborted revolution, the tally at the Leskov plant had been woefully uneven. Perhaps fourteen strikers had either been shot or bludgeoned to death, as against the three policemen who had lost their own lives. This imbalance had been redressed somehow (the equation was mysterious) late that night when the surviving workers, with police consent, rampaged through Lipetsk’s small Jewish quarter.

“And Comrade Tarass, in your experienced judgment, what is the level of discontent at the plant today?”

“Are there more heads to crack, your honor?”

“No, no, no…” Ivanov said emphatically. “This is not the right moment, the revolutionary forces have not been assembled. It is
criminal
to act before the workers are prepared, it is a path of action that can be espoused only by
agents provocateurs
!”

“Yes, sir,” said Tarass, baffled by the outburst. “You’re right, no one’s in the mood to fight now, not even the gendarmes, I dare say. The Count is a man of peace. He’s made a big impression, sir: Christian Love and Brotherhood, the True Gospel. We’re all greatly honored by his visit to Astapovo. He’s
with
us, your honor.”

“You call it a ‘visit’?” Ivanov squinted at the tanner, looking for some glimmer of irony.

Tarass stared down at the floor, sensing Ivanov’s disapproval.

Ivanov declared, “The Tsar fears the Count. That’s enough for now. He’s sent police and troops and spies. Let’s see what effect the Count’s death produces on the population. There’ll be a funeral and perhaps mass demonstrations against the rotten-to-the-
core church. How will the police react? And the workers? This is a perfect test. We’re in a hunter’s blind; we’re demonstrating revolutionary patience. Let’s see where the ducks fly when they get a scare.” He glared at the sheet of figures. “Telephones! Where are the figures relating to the telephones?”

Tarass leaned forward and very tentatively brought his hand toward the table, as if fearing that it might be bit off.

“Here. Your honor, here.”

“Three hundred and twelve private call boxes, is that what this means?” Without turning his head, Ivanov muttered to the woman, “Approximate to Samara.” He asked Tarass, “And the number and locations of the telephone exchanges?”

“That wasn’t available. At least not yet, so far. Um, the ministry seems to be keeping the information under its hat, so to speak.”

Ivanov smirked. “One doesn’t expect such wisdom from one of Nicky’s ministers. Can it be that some official, some petty bureaucrat, has developed a vague notion that this is precisely the information we need? Do you reckon that this man comprehends that every private call box in the district lies at the end of a living electrical nerve that connects it instantaneously with every other call box in the district, and throughout Russia itself? Does he see that these private call boxes, when taken together, are like a kind of animal that moves with the collective will of its users? Does he have any conception about the beast he’s riding? He must. He must realize that the only way to harness this beast is through the physical control of the exchanges, and he’s keeping their number and locations from us. Ha-ha, it’s a point in our favor that he’s but one petty bureaucrat with limited influence, and
we
know what he knows, and we’re a movement. You
must
get me a list of the dis
trict’s exchanges. Surely it’s available from the operators themselves. There must be one such operator vulnerable to appeals of solidarity, or to blackmail.”

“Yes, your honor,” said Tarass, with exaggerated enthusiasm to hide his confusion about the meaning of Ivanov’s speech. “Sir, there is one difficulty. As you know, the local Party’s membership has declined, so we have been presented with some questions about funds…”

At that moment the tanner was interrupted by a fist on the door to the house. The widower, who had fallen nearly asleep, abruptly rushed to his feet. When he reached the door, he called through it in a wafer-thin voice, “Yes?”

“Thesis!” came the reply, crisply pronounced.

The old man turned to the gentlemen from abroad for approval. Bobkin called out the countersign: “Antithesis!”

From the other side of the door came a reflexive counter-countersign: “Synthesis!”

Bobkin nodded, giving the widower permission to open his own door.

A new visitor now appeared, someone else with whom the widower was not acquainted. It was hard to believe that this day hadn’t ended and that still more strangers were filing into his modest home. His head was spinning; he had agreed to put up Ivanov and his wife at the request of the respected local school-teacher, who had sworn him to secrecy without explanation. He had never expected so many men of affairs, talking to each other in code, employing mysterious terminology and German. They were revolutionists, he only now realized.

The new man was breathing heavily, his face flushed from his run through the frigid night. The knees of his trousers had been dirtied when he slipped on the ice. He didn’t glance around the
room, neither at his hosts nor the other men attending Ivanov, nor at the woman standing behind Ivanov. His eyes went to Ivanov’s immediately.

“Dzhugashvili!” he announced, nearly shouting.

Bobkin fell a step back and sputtered, “Iosif Vissarionovich?”

Ivanov’s eyes became wide, as if he had just been slapped in the face. “Koba?” he asked, disbelieving.

“Stalin!” the new visitor confirmed. They had now recapitulated the evolution of a dread revolutionary identity.

Until now the woman had presented an unyielding countenance. But now something was working on her face, beneath the skin, like an awful muscular storm. She could not keep her features in place. She remained silent.

Ivanov spoke, mostly to himself: “Here in Astapovo…”

“Yes, comrade. He arrived on the train this evening.”

“Did you see him with your own eyes? What does he want? Does he know I’m here?”

“He sends warm fraternal greetings, to both you and Comrade Nadezhda Konstantinovna.”

The woman gasped as she heard her name and patronymic spoken freely. This was grievously irregular. Stalin was plotting something.

Her husband pounded the table. “Why did he come? How did he get here? I thought he was in internal exile! He’s the most undisciplined, reckless, untrustworthy,
impudent
revolutionist that there ever was!”

The newcomer, who in 1905 had led a brave charge of striking bakery workers against a police barricade in the Presnya district of Moscow, now trembled from the force of Ivanov’s anger. He mumbled, “He says he’s awaiting your instructions.”

“My instructions!” Ivanov shouted, blood rushing to his face.
Years later, when Ivanov was felled by the first in a fatal series of strokes, Bobkin would be at his side and would recall this moment. He would realize that the world’s single indispensable man had been close to a stroke even then. “My instructions are for him to get as far from Astapovo as the earth’s dimensions permit! My instructions are for him to go back to Siberia!”

Ivanov’s wife finally spoke, her voice a level monotone. “The son of a bitch,” she said.