The Light and the Dark (30 page)

Kirill and I have found a rich European library here. For the most part the books are on mathematics, physics and chemistry. Our soldiers immediately took it into their heads to start ripping them up and burning them – no one tries to stop them any more. It’s interesting that all the academy buildings are built in the Chinese style and stand in single file, one behind the other. The first buildings used to house the professors, auditoriums, laboratories and teaching rooms, and the ones behind them were student residences. The various service buildings and the kitchen were right at the back.

A wooden observation tower has been built in the middle of the first courtyard. Today I climbed up to the very top tier, which would offer a delightful view, if only I wasn’t thinking about what’s going on all around. Directly to the north of the arsenal the Lutai Canal is visible, the Chinese have set up artillery batteries along both of its banks. To the west is Chinese Tientsin, with the western concessions a little further away. The railway line to Tong-Ku runs off to the south-east. And stretching away to the east is a boundless plain, overgrown with kaoliang, with the dark patches of Chinese villages and groves of trees scattered here and there. Somewhere far away to the north and the east, through binoculars I could see the movement of Chinese forces, apparently advancing from Lutai to Tientsin.

Kirill and I wandered round the arsenal and were amazed by its riches. There are armaments workshops, depots and laboratories here. Chinese copper and silver coins used to be minted here too. The immense halls here contain an entire factory in which gunpowder was manufactured and cartridges were produced for the very latest models of Mauser and Mannlicher rifles. The underground
depots contain huge stocks of various kinds of grenades, mines and shrapnel. Kirill translated the Chinese inscriptions for me. For instance: ‘Vault of underground thunder’ means ‘Mine depot’ and ‘Dwelling of the water-dragon’ is in fact nothing more than ‘Fire-fighting equipment depot’.

Beside the furnaces, large boilers and engines, the Chinese workers had set up images of the patron gods of labour and burned incense sticks to them. Notices in red were stuck on the engines and boilers, with maxims like ‘To start an engine is a great happiness’, ‘To open a boiler means great prosperity’.

This move of ours is a positive one, if only because we are no longer next to the infirmary and do not hear the groans of the wounded by day and by night. Of course, it’s bad that I no longer have the chance to drop in and chat with Zaremba or Lucie. You get attached to people very quickly here.

The powder magazines are laid out in an open area in the western section of the arsenal. It’s terrifying to walk past them and feel that a single lucky shot will send everything here flying sky-high. And the best thing would be to be killed outright, not maimed.

No, Sashenka, that’s what I used to think, but now I think quite differently about that. I used to think that life as a deformed freak or a cripple was a tremendous misfortune, the futile, pointless existence of a worm. I dreamed of an ideal death, so that I wouldn’t even notice I had died. Of vanishing in an instant.

But now I want to live. Any way at all.

Sasha, I want to live so much – as a cripple, as a deformed freak! To live! Not to stop breathing! The most terrible thing about death is stopping breathing.

Once in the infirmary I was struck by the following scene: there was a wounded man there with everything smashed – all his arms and legs – waiting for amputation, and some joker was telling a
funny story, and everyone in the tent roared with laughter, and this wounded man laughed too. I didn’t understand what he was laughing at, I couldn’t understand then. But now I understand.

They can wound me, I can become a cripple. But I will live! Hop about on one foot. So what if I only have one foot, I can gallop off anywhere I like on it. Let them tear off both my legs! I’ll look out of the window!

If I’m blinded, then I’m blinded, but I’ll still hear everything around me, all the sounds, what a miracle that is! My tongue? Let there be nothing left but my tongue – I’ll be able to tell if the tea is sweet or not so sweet. If there’s a hand left, I want that hand to live! I can touch and feel the world with it!

Sashenka, I’m afraid this letter will seem like delirious rambling to you. Forgive me, my dear one, for all this raving. The raving is not because I’m ill, but because I am who I am.

And the most surprising thing is that everyone here hopes to get back home safely.

And everyone, when he sees someone else whom he knows or doesn’t know with dull pupils, waxy skin and an open mouth, thinks joyfully: him, not me! A shameful, insuperable joy: today they killed him, not me! And today I’m still alive!

And I can’t rid myself of the thought that any letter of mine, even this one, could be the last. Or might never be finished at all. It’s only in operas that everything comes to a meaningful end with the final note of the concluding aria. But here men die at random.

Sashenka, what could be more terrible than to die simply at random?

Every minute and every letter could be the last, so I absolutely must say what’s most important and not write about inconsequential trifles.

And precisely because this letter could be broken off at any
moment, I have to tell you now everything that I haven’t said before or put off for later.

But what can I write about? Everything seems like inconsequential trifles.

You know, there’s a story I was going to tell you some time, many years from now, when it will be amusing. But I’ll write it now. What if I can’t tell you later? It’s of no interest to anyone except me. But I need to tell it. It’s a short story.

And perhaps, viewed from here, it has already become amusing.

I met my father after all.

Mum had a box that she kept locked in the sideboard. I saw where she hid the key. When there was nobody at home, I opened it. It was full of various documents, papers and receipts. And it turned out that all those years my father had been sending my mum money regularly. I hadn’t known anything about that. But the important thing was that I found his address.

I didn’t tell Mum anything.

At first I wanted to write to him, but I didn’t know what to say. Then I decided to go to see him. One night in a train, and there I was standing outside his door.

I stood there and couldn’t bring myself to ring the bell.

Imagine it – living for years and years, thinking about this meeting. And now I couldn’t explain to myself what I wanted. What did I need this for? I hadn’t slept a wink all night in the train. I wasn’t some naive adolescent, to go thinking I would finally acquire the loving and beloved father I had dreamed about so much. I knew I would meet someone who was a stranger. And that he didn’t need me at all. After all, he had abandoned me. And he hadn’t enquired after me once in all those years. Maybe he wouldn’t even let me inside the door. What was it I wanted? Finally to receive the love of which I had been deprived
all my life? That wasn’t possible. I had already lived the part of my life when I really needed him, without him. Perhaps I was an avenger? Come to wreak vengeance on the scoundrel who had abandoned his wife and infant child? To spit out my backlog of hatred? My righteous wrath? Someone had to punish him for his villainy, didn’t they? To punch him in the face? Humiliate him? Perhaps what I needed was his repentance, his pleading for forgiveness?

Strangely enough, I felt hate for my mother and stepfather, rather than for this man, about whom I knew nothing.

What if he feels frightened that I want something from him? I don’t want anything from him. If he tries to give me anything, I won’t take it.

I felt uneasy. And the longer I stood in front of that door, the more obvious it became that I no longer wanted this meeting that I had been dreaming about since my childhood. And I didn’t want him.

I was already on the point of leaving, but just then the door opened. He must have sensed that there was someone standing there.

A flabby, wheezing body. He drew the air into his blocked nostrils noisily. I hadn’t been expecting to see an obese old man with puffy circles under his eyes and flabby cheeks. It was him. He looked at me without saying anything.

I said:

‘Hello! I’m here to see you.’

I was astounded that he realised who I was straightaway, as if he had also been waiting for this moment while he lived through all those years.

The confused expression on his face lasted only a brief moment, then he raised his eyebrows, sighed and simply said:

‘Well, come in. Are you hungry after your journey?

It was a strange feeling, as if all this wasn’t happening to me, it was all so impossible and so commonplace at the same time. He introduced me to his wife and children, saying that I was the son of his first wife, Nina. Everybody felt awkward – nobody had been prepared for anything like this. Nobody said anything. His wife spoke for everybody, but she spoke in a hoarse, strangled whisper. She explained that nervous stress had triggered a growth on her thyroid gland and it pressed on her windpipe. Strangely enough, she reminded me of my mother somehow.

My sister turned out to be a young maiden of vast proportions. She sat down and the armchair was instantly overflowing with her. She glared sideways at me, as if I wanted to steal something from her.

But the little boy, on the contrary, really took to me. It obviously tickled his fancy that an older brother had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He asked straight away if I knew any combat holds and was disappointed when I said no. Probably in his boy’s world the presence of an older brother who knew some combat holds would have made his life a lot easier.

They were my brother and sister, but I didn’t feel anything for them – and why should I feel anything?

My brother dragged me into his room and started hastily showing me his riches – models of ships, toy soldiers, a cardboard fortress – and he told me his sister didn’t go to the grammar school because they were boycotting her there, no one wanted to sit with her in the classroom or the dining hall. And so she hung about at home all the time, since she didn’t have any girlfriends, let alone boyfriends.

It was strange suddenly to find myself in the middle of someone’s life.

When she and I were left alone together for a while, I had no idea at all what to talk about and I started asking what she read. I had absolutely no intention of offending anyone, but she suddenly declared in a resentful tone of voice:

‘A woman knows that men who look at her make no distinction between herself and her appearance.’

I was glad when we were called to dinner.

Nobody said anything at the table either, only my father’s wife asked me in her strangled wheeze about my plans for my life.

The poor girl took the lid off the tureen to pour herself more cabbage soup, but our father admonished her:

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have any more?’

Her face immediately turned scarlet, tears spurted from her eyes, she jumped up from the table and ran off clumsily to her room.

Our father heaved a sigh, crumpled up his napkin and went after her, but he came back empty-handed. She wouldn’t open the door for him.

After that everyone finished eating in silence, staring at their plates. I sat there and thought: ‘What am I doing here? But everything in the world happens for some reason, doesn’t it? Surely there must be some kind of sense to all this?’ That sense refused to reveal itself to me. How could I ever have imagined that my meeting with my father would be like this?

I sat with my little brother for a while, helping him solve problems about trains and pedestrians and feeling astonished that he could be so backward at his age. Our sister looked in and tossed a scarf that had been dropped in the corridor onto the bed.

He pulled a face at her back as she left and whined:

‘Barrel-belly, wobbly jelly!’

I put my hand on his neck.

‘Don’t talk about her like that.’

He twisted up his face.

‘She’s my sister! I talk about her any way I like.’

I squeezed his neck. I could see from his face that it hurt.

‘She’s my sister! Don’t you dare talk about her like that again! Do you understand?’

He squealed that he understood and I let him go. His glance made it clear that he didn’t like having an older brother at all any more.

In the evening my father and I were left alone together. He kept sipping tea from a large cup – he said he had kidney stones.

I asked what he did. It turned out that my father was an architect. I hadn’t even known that about him.

I enquired what he was designing at the moment and the answer was:

‘The Tower of Babel!’

Then he told me they had been commissioned to design a new prison.

He sat there, shoulders hunched, one leg crossed over the other. Just like me. Only now did it strike me how alike we were. I started noticing my inflections, gestures and grimaces in him. My nose was his, too, and the shape of my eyes, and my lips.

I asked if my father remembered me being born. He livened up at that and started telling me about the first time he saw me. He said that immediately after I was born my little face was like an Egyptian bas-relief, but the next day the depth of everything had increased – my nose was more convex, my eyes were more deeply set, my lips were lips. I was carrot-coloured from infantile jaundice, and he was also amazed that I appeared in the world with fingernails that were already long.

I asked if he remembered how we went to meet Mum at the railway station, and he sat me on his shoulders so I could look out for her. He nodded uncertainly.

He asked me about Mum, about her blind husband, about my universities. But I could see that he wasn’t very interested. Neither was I. We were both yawning. I’d had a sleepless night in the train before all this.

They made up a bed for me in his study, on the divan beside the bookcase.

I kept waiting for him to say something important to me. But all I heard was:

‘Goodnight, we’ll have another good talk tomorrow.’