The People's Act of Love (19 page)

And Chanov said that to those who were not White Doves,
the crows, he called them, it seemed that the misery and wickedness
of the world was divided into a million parts, that they
were not linked. That anger, and greed, and lust, and warlikeness,
and the ambition that tramples others, and lying for gain,
and selfishness, and the sadness that comes even to the rich in
the evening, were not all part of that same Devil’s urge. They
were blind. Why did man make war and heap up riches and
lust after women if not for the same itching of his seed, urging
him on? Had I not seen in the faces of the Hussars as they
rode to war, driving their innocent beasts to destruction, that
same insatiable hunger which I had seen in them at the gaming
table and as they coveted the goods and women of others? The
Devil’s keychain was too strong for the Lord’s Commandments
to hold. The very form of the Keys to Hell showed that they
were of the Curse of the Serpent and the Fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge; a trunk and two fruit. Only by destroying them
could a man escape, and the Enemy had made them so dear
to us. Had I not thought, when he showed me his angel’s body
in the stream, that he had made a greater sacrifice than if he
had cut off his hands, or cut his throat? Had I not thought
that?

I told him I had, and told him I was ready. He told me I
was not ready. We repeated these words many times to each
other until I asked what the Book said. Chanov recited the
words of Matthew: ‘And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it
out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one
of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.’ And he recited from John: ‘Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of
the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world.
’

I stood up and begged him to take me with him to Paradise.
He stood, and put his hand on my shoulder, and shook his
head, and said he could not. I asked him again. After I had
asked him many times he asked me if I truly wanted this and
I said I did, the joy and fear still growing in me. He led me
to the charcoal burner’s hut, stopping every pace to ask again
if I was certain.

Inside the hut it was very hot. An open furnace glowed red,
and there was a wooden chair on the dirt floor. Chanov told
me to remove my clothes. He told me that at any time I could
stop before the cutting by shouting: ‘I refuse!
’

I heard a knife being sharpened outside. For a moment the
fear surged and then I thought that compared to what I had
seen in the killing, what my comrades had suffered and would
suffer, this was little. Chanov sat me in the chair and bade me open my legs. He told me that for now, he would only cut the
fruit, and not the trunk. This was called the First Seal, and
Mounting the Skewbald Horse; Mounting the White Horse
came later. He said that when he had done, I must take them
and throw them in the fire.

The apprentices came in. The one who had turned was still
smiling and looked a little glassy-eyed. One of them was carrying
a short, sharp knife, which he gave to Chanov, a white
towel, and an open bottle of spirit, which he placed on the
ground.

The four men kneeled in front of me and began to pray. At
intervals I was given responses to make. Anna, these I cannot
tell you; they are the most secret words. The men stood. One
of the apprentices held my arms behind my back; the other
two held the ankles of my open legs. Chanov bent over me,
lifted my member with his left hand, and brought the knife
down quickly with the other. In that one moment, it seemed
God turned his face away, and the fear smothered the joy. I
thought about Alyosha, and I was glad I had helped bring him
into the world, and I thought about you and I on the train to
Crimea after we were married, and how you had laid claim to
a part of me, and I had given it to you, and how I was breaking
faith with that. The knife was very sharp. It cut through
the skin and tubes to the wood of the chair in less than a
second, long before I began to feel pain. I do not think I
screamed. I tried not to, for some reason. Perhaps I had done
my screaming against Hijaz’s dead neck. I felt the apprentices
release me, the warm gush of blood between my thighs, the
shock of spirit poured over the wound, and the towel handed
me to press against it. Then Chanov put the sac he had just
amputated into the palm of my free hand, a warm familiar
part of me that was no longer part of me. I walked to the
furnace and threw it in, where it crackled and disappeared in
the flames. I fell.

Anna, it is done, and it cannot be undone. I have much
more to tell you and will write again soon. I wanted you to
know, although I was not supposed to tell you anything. I
wanted you to know. Do not tell Alyosha yet. But I wanted
you to know I am a deserter, and an angel, I have been castrated
and I am happy.

With the pure remains of my love for you,

Do not be angry for ever,

Your legal husband

Former lieutenant Gleb Alexeyevich Balashov

Yazyk

20 December 1914

Mutz finished reading and put down the letter on the divan. He looked up at the portrait of the man he now knew to be Balashov, Anna’s father’s wedding present. It bore no resemblance to the storekeeper of Yazyk, of course, but that had been the father’s talent. Something to show Alyosha. Mutz had never felt so soiled as after reading Balashov’s confession. He shuddered with the sense of the blade, which it was impossible not to feel severing that same thin tie of flesh between his own legs. He stood up, flexed his fingers, looked around without knowing what for. He was sweating and he swallowed several times, wondering if he was about to vomit. He should go in to speak to Anna Petrovna, but he couldn’t bear to look on the bitch’s face. The cold sweat rolled over him in a wave as he heard his mind come up with that phrase, as if from some unknown country inside
himself: the bitch’s face. It was the first flame of an anger that began to burn into him from different directions, knocking him back on the divan, immobilising him, while his skin, his whole body, went hot with it. Anger towards himself for not seeing that this was a community of skoptsy, of castrates, was the least of it. The rage flamed in from the beast-stupid, ignorant, blind literal-mindedness of Balashov, the petulant tantrum of the action, the impossibility of a sane mind like Mutz’s ever spanning the distance between the two extremes, between the greatest harm and pain, and the silliest joke, a man could execute with his own body. The rage flamed in from the self-delusion and naiveté of Anna Petrovna, trusting in the sanity of a hussar obsessed with God, and letting him go to war. It burned hottest from her selfishness in following the madman here to the edge of the world, as if they could in any sense still be husband and wife, letting her son languish in an unnecessary exile, and, after allowing him, Mutz, to believe she was in love with him, revealing her eunuch jester as if he could be even a partial reason for her sudden coldness.

Mutz felt he needed to hit something. There was no reason for him to stay. He strode out through the front door of the house, slamming it behind him, out onto the road and towards the bridge. Just before the bridge was a cluster of rowan trees and he seized the trunk of one and shook it, yelling, till the berries pattered into the wet weeds around him. One of the branches cracked and the violence of the sound made him stop and try to remember why he had gone to Anna Petrovna’s. Samarin’s murderous thief. The cannibal.

Mutz began walking back. The same dog barked and he remembered his hesitation, the fear and the hope of walking to Anna Petrovna’s only an hour before, and how Samarin’s
cannibal had faded from his mind. Why? His insides turned to stone. Because he had been thinking with that which Balashov had removed. If you did not believe in God or the Devil, was it worse to be led by that? Whose keychain was he on?

Mutz, docile and tender now, crept in through the front door, removed the key from the inside lock, locked the door from the outside, and pushed the key under the door. He passed round to the back of the house. He looked in through the kitchen window. Anna Petrovna was sleeping, head on the kitchen table. He did not think of waking her. Perhaps he loved her, in a way that had nothing to do with what his loins told him to do. How could you ever be sure?

He went down to the yard gate and bolted it, then lay down on the straw in the warm stink of the little cowshed. It was Balashov, of course, who had been concerned about Anna Petrovna. About his wife, curse him. He had cared. Was care love? What use was Anna Petrovna’s love to her husband now? He had divorced her with the knife quicker than any lawyer. And more cheaply. Mutz found he was smiling. For a moment he felt wretched, then managed to persuade himself it was a sign that his disgust and anger with Balashov was turning to pity. All Balashov wanted, all his damaged congregation of amputated angels wanted, was to be left alone. There must still be a few islands of human feeling left sticking up above the surface of Anna Petrovna’s husband’s insanity; a sense of duty, perhaps. Mutz could reach those islands and work on them. Was it so ridiculous after all to believe that Balashov was what was preventing Anna Petrovna and Alyosha leaving Yazyk with him? He had to speak to Balashov and explain why he must persuade his wife and son to leave and never see him again. He would understand. It would fit
within the logic of his madness. Then what would remain would be to get Matula to release the Czechs from
his
madness and begin the great journey to Vladivostok. It was hard, but it was simple. He could not leave the Czechs behind. They were his people, even if they did not think so. Mutz fell asleep.

Matula

V
iktor Timofeyovich Skachkov, Land Captain of Yazyk, was eating breakfast alone in the dining room when his wife shrieked the name of God three times upstairs, each time louder than the last, then let out a long howl which rolled from high to low, ending in a gurgle of pure foundedness, like a baby laughing. The sounds were clear throughout the house. The Land Captain’s lips slipped rissole off his fork smoothly and swiftly. When Elizaveta Timurovna fell silent it was light and tranquil in the dining room, with windows on two sides, dust spinning in sunbeams, the ticking of a clock and the swish of cloth as the maid, Pelageya Fedotovna Pilipenko, poured tea.

‘Disgrace,’ she whispered.

The Land Captain did not slurp in drinking hot water, nor did he open his mouth while chewing, or chink his cutlery against the porcelain of his plate. He was at an altar of silence.

‘Good morning, Viktor Timofeyovich,’ said Mutz, in the doorway. ‘Good morning, Pelageya Fedotovna. Captain Matula asked us to join him at breakfast.’

The Land Captain went on eating as if he had not heard, looking at a spot midway down the long table.

‘Well, sit down,’ said Pelageya Fedotovna.

Mutz thanked her and entered with the two other Czech lieutenants, Kliment and Dezort.

‘Could you fry us some potatoes, with a little bacon, and some smoked cheese?’ said Kliment to Pelageya Fedotovna, leaning back in his chair.

‘Arrogance!’ said Pelageya Fedotovna. ‘There’s rissoles and kasha, bread and tea. You’re not in Karlsbad now.’

‘I wish I could take you there,’ said Kliment, breaking off a piece of bread and putting it in his mouth. ‘I’d buy you a blue dress. You’d look lovely.’

‘Why blue?’ muttered Pelageya Fedotovna, laying out plates for the officers.

‘And diamonds,’ said Kliment.

‘What would I be wanting in Karlsbad, in your mad Europe, I don’t know.’

‘In a blue dress, with diamonds, coming down the stairs at the Hotel Bristol, and all the gentlemen and ladies of fashion would say: who is that fascinating Russian beauty? Surely some princess of an ancient house, or Diaghilev’s new protegé?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Pelageya Fedotovna. ‘Complete idiotism. And why blue? Why not yellow, for example?’

Kliment and Dezort laughed and Pelageya Fedotovna blushed and told them to stop, it was indecent, it was boldness, pure boldness, unforgiveable.

‘I went to Karlsbad,’ said the Land Captain.

Everyone had forgotten he was not part of the furniture, that his movements and consumption of food were something more inminded than the ticking of the clock.

The Land Captain said: ‘I remember in one of the theatres they had a negro woman dressed in white who claimed she could talk to Satan, but it was all a trick, we weren’t deceived by it, when she was talking in those two voices, one very high, one low like a bear. She tried to scare us, but we weren’t scared, though like all Africans she was acquainted with the Enemy,
of course, and I had my hand on my pocket pistol. The food was very bad, I remember. Their trout was insipid, nothing like the fish you can catch here. Great red fish, the size of this table, rich as venison.’