Red Star Tales Page 10

  Silence again ensued. In the distance, the electric bell sounded pitiably: one, two, three…

  “That bell! It’s driving me mad,” said Lyuba, momentarily plugging her ears with her long fingers.

  “Yesterday I was at Karpov’s,” Aglaya murmured, almost inaudibly.

  “You were!” Lyuba cried out excitedly, turning to her. “So, how was it? You’re so lucky, Aglaya. Tell me everything, do you hear? Everything.”

  “I’m depressed... I can’t talk about it. My soul feels nasty, filthy.”

  “But why? How I’d love to be in your place. Don’t blush... Karpov is so handsome, so magnificent…”

  VIII

  The telephone rang abruptly, and a ray of white light pierced the room.

  “Who is it?” asked Aglaya, annoyed.

  “Vitinsky,” Lyuba read the lighted panel.

  “Let him in, please,” Aglaya intervened, hurrying to prevent her friend from sending him away.

  “I can’t stand that reformer,” Lyuba whispered, turning away from the telephone.

  “Please,” Aglaya repeated, folding her hands and begging.

  “All right, fine…” Lyuba turned back to the telephone and said, “Come on over. Your admirer Aglaya is here too.”

  As soon as Lyuba turned off the telephone, Aglaya asked in annoyance, “What’d you tell him that for?”

  “What? Isn’t it true? But he’s not my type, and I don’t understand why you like him. He’s troubled, somehow.”

  “It’s his troubled nature that attracts me.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  The conversation kept faltering. The friends sat in silence, each thinking her own thoughts.

  “What time is it?” Aglaya eventually asked. “I haven’t eaten since lunch today, but I don’t feel like eating.”

  Lyuba raised her arm back over hear head and pressed a small button. A clock-face gleamed above the heater. “Seven thirty,” Lyuba said.

  “Thanks,” Aglaya said, then resumed her silence.

  “Did you get transferred?” Lyuba asked, after a long pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “The pasta factory. At least it’s more fun than sorting and mailing packages.”

  “Well, I’m so sick of my gloves, I could… I could… Well, I can’t even think of the word.”

  “You could just cry?”

  “Exactly.”

  IX

  They heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” said Lyuba.

  A tall, well developed and muscular fellow entered.

  “Is that you, Pavel?” asked Lyuba, not turning around.

  “Yes, it’s me. Why don’t you have any lights on?” Pavel greeted the young ladies.

  “Just because. I’m tense.”

  “I see… well, these days it’s all too easy to be tense. Have you heard the latest news?”

  “It’s awful,” whispered Lyuba.

  “First, there was an explosion in the central heating station in Moscow. A cylinder of gas blew up, taking several houses with it. More than ten are confirmed dead so far, and part of the roof was destroyed. The whole city is freezing. Also, and this is the news that really excites me, seven people, members of the “Southern Society of Individualism,”1 have been captured, interrogated, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Some of them have come and talked to us about their ideas. Yesterday in the city of Solianii they received a genuine ovation after their lecture. They weren’t able to make it back to their home before the Supreme Soviet ordered them rounded up and tried at a special session...”

  “It’s about time someone took measures against this infection,” said Lyuba.

  “But where is our freedom?” asked Aglaya.

  “Freedom, freedom... a hackneyed expression,” answered Lyuba. “These people are undermining society, threatening calamities worse than any explosions...”

  “You have to fight words with words,” said Aglaya.

  “And what word do you use to fight the plague?” asked Lyuba, upset. “There are words worse than plagues.”

  She began to speak excitedly, getting upset and gesticulating: “Like we need these prophets! For hundreds, no, for thousands of years humanity moaned, suffered, writhed in blood and tears. Finally its troubles were solved, it solved the eternal problems: there are no more unhappy, destitute, forgotten people any more. Everyone has a place in the world, warmth, enough to eat, the opportunity to study…”

  “And they’re all slaves,” tossed out Pavel quietly.

  “That’s not true,” Lyuba responded heatedly, “it’s not true. There are no more slaves. We’re all free and equal. There aren’t slaves because there aren’t masters.”

  “There’s one terrible master.”

  “Who?”

  “The crowd. Your ghastly ‘majority’.”

  “Stop. It’s the same old story. It annoys me, I can’t just listen indifferently to it,” Lyuba now fell silent, wringing her hands nervously.

  “But they draw me in, as if into a deep pool, into the abyss,” Aglaya said softly.

  “Who does?” asked Lyuba.

  “Those whom you ironically call ‘prophets’.”

  Lyuba smirked derisively, but didn’t answer. Then she said, “So, should we have some tea?” She shook her head, as if shaking off unpleasant thoughts about troubled people.

  “Yes,” said Pavel and Aglaya in unison, then looked at each other, as if testing one another to see if they shared the same secret.

  X

  Lyuba took three glasses, milk, cookies, and bread and butter from the tray, then pressed the button and shut the door.

  “Some light would be nice now,” Pavel commented, as he took his glass. “It’s a little awkward to sit in the dark.”

  Wordlessly, Lyuba turned a handle, and a soft light-blue light flowed from the ceiling.

  Pavel took a few sips, then leaned back in his armchair and began to speak. “I’m reading old books now. Every evening I devote a couple of hours to reading.”

  “So what?” Lyuba asked curtly, still upset.

  “I’m envious,” Pavel began slowly. “I envy the free people of those times. I envy the unfortunate, hungry, and cold peasants. They lived so freely, so broadly, choosing either work or idleness according to their own free wills.”

  “That’s the main thing, to be free to die of hunger,” Lyuba tossed out.

  “Yes, to be free to die of hunger.”

  “You can die of hunger from your own free will now, too, if you want.”

  “Yes, I’m free to die any moment I want, but they don’t allow me to live as I’d like.”

  Aglaya did not take her eyes off him, catching his words hungrily. “Yes, those are my thoughts too,” she finally said.

  “Be quiet! You’re unbearable,” cried Lyuba. “Now you’re going to start talking about religion.” She laughed contemptuously.

  “Oh, how I would like to believe!” said Pavel, caught up by her words, “to believe purely, naively, passionately, as they describe in the those books. But they stole that from me when I was still a baby. They poisoned my soul with skepticism. Now it’s dead, lifeless. How I envy the old-fashioned families, with mothers and fathers instead of numbered citizens.”

  “You’re against the communal raising of children, too?”

  “Yes, I’m against it, and I’m not afraid to talk about it, I don’t care how wild it sounds or how much it goes against the current postulates of Grand Science or prevailing morals.”

  “Be quiet, it makes me sick to listen to you. I don’t believe you. It’s just an act.”

  “Oh, no, I’m absolutely sincere. A friendly, old-fashioned family! How nice that must have been! How the children jumped for joy, meeting their father when he came home! How trusting and loving they were, pressing close to their own mother!”

  “Your head is stuffed full of old nonsense. You need to stop reading and take a vacation.”

  �
��Of course, that’s the best medicine!” he said mockingly. “No, that won’t help. Once these feelings have awoken in your soul, you can’t suppress them.”

  “Do you know that in Africa, near New Berlin, a society has been organized to demand from the Supreme African Soviet the legalization of the family according to the old ways?” said Aglaya.

  “Yes, I heard that. I sympathize with them, very much. And if I ever get together with a woman,” Pavel added meaningfully, “if I go with one it will be forever, and we will never part. If she nevertheless tries to leave me, I’ll kill her and myself.”

  “You’re completely nuts,” said Lyuba. “More tea?”

  “No thanks… Free people. But what about our service in the Army of Labor, as inescapable and obligatory as fate itself? What about our obligatory occupation? What are you doing now?”

  Lyuba replied, “I’m at the glove factory.”

  “Well, there you are. How do you like it?”

  “It’s necessary. And besides, it only takes up four hours a day, and we do what we like the rest of the time.”

  “But I don’t want to succumb for a minute, not a single instant, I don’t want to do my cursed glass-polishing for a single minute.”

  “Request a transfer.”

  “To do what? Hammer in nails? Mix dough? I don’t want to be coerced into doing anything, not even moving a single muscle.”

  “And why are you yakking on about this?” asked Lyuba. “You’re not going to convert society. And if the majority is against you, you must submit to it.”

  “The majority, the majority. The damned, imbecilic majority. A rock, crushing any possible freedom of movement.”

  XI

  Pavel jumped up and began to pace nervously. “I’ve been made extraneous. I’ve had my faith taken away. I don’t know by what miracle there still are believers among us; how I’d love to have that miracle myself! I’ve been robbed, but nobody gave me anything in exchange, no weapon against that fearsome, monstrous enemy: death.”

  “What kind of weapon do you want? There never was one, except in old fairy tales.”

  “Faith was a weapon. Strong, fiery faith, that gives us courage in even the darkest night.”

  “Science gives us more than faith. It’s real, not just in dreams and delusions, but actually real. It extended human life expectancy twofold. It freed man from disease. What more do you want? I think that these real blessings are more than enough to replace the illusory blessings of faith.”

  “What about death?”

  “Didn’t the faithful die, too?”

  “They did, but they believed they would be resurrected.” Pavel paced the room, then resumed. “Freedom,” he said, “but I can’t say that a single thing on this earth, a single corner of it, is mine. There’s not a single corner where I can do precisely what I want, how I want.”

  “You so love talking about the olden days. What about the ancient Christians? I read a whole book about them recently. They shared everything.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Everything was shared. But it was purely for love, not by coercion. I would gladly share everything with everyone, if it was for love, for fraternity.”

  He paused, plucking at his short beard, just long enough to curl.

  “When I’m out walking along the Field of Mars,”2 he began again, “beneath its stunning palms, magnolias, and oleanders, among its bright flowers, and I see that damned Palace of the Supreme Soviet, my hands start to shake and I believe that I could strangle those people, tranquil, cold and soulless as machines. The inflated speeches our orators give at public festivals always seem to me to be a mockery, pathetic wretchedness. I always want to answer their trite words about the prosperity of humanity with a short phrase: you’re blind! Humanity is dead. It no longer exists. It was only valuable for its soul, this was what gave it the right to live… the bright impulses of the soul, the bright tears of love… and now…”

  Pavel was breathing heavily. Aglaya kept her rapt gaze fixed on him and thought, “Yes. Those are my thoughts, too.”

  XII

  “Let’s walk together,” Pavel said to Aglaya as she prepared to leave. “Could we?”

  “Of course we can. I’d be very happy.”

  They went downstairs and walked out into the street. The self-mobiles had already stopped running; the lonely steps of a few pedestrians rang hollowly in the street.

  “It must be a clear, moonlit night,” said Aglaya, lifting her face to the sky.

  “Probably so. You can see the moonlight through the roof.”

  “Let’s go up, to the pneumatic station. I love to watch them lift off and gradually disappear in the sky. It’s especially pretty on a moonlit night. They look like silvery birds.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They walked side-by-side toward Liteyny, first falling into the patterned shadows of palm fronds, then showered in milky radiance. The little red lights of news bulletins flared here and there. Aglaya and Pavel climbed the stairs in silence.

  “Comrade, give us some coats,” said Pavel, laying his hand on the sleeping dutyman’s shoulder.

  “Where’re you off to so late?” the man said, more bored than curious, and gave them each a set of warm clothes. “What warehouse should I write you down for?”

  “We’re not here for long, we just want to go for a walk on the platform,” Pavel said.

  “Mm-hm,” the dutyman said, sitting back down in his warm, comfortable armchair.

  Pavel and Aglaya went out onto the platform. A pneumatic was ready to take off and it hovered, trembling faintly. The full moon hung in the very middle of the cloudless blue sky. Its delicate, tender rays fell on the roof, stretching out to the horizon. Tall smokestacks and cornices cast blue shadows. The roof, powdered with unswept snow, sparkled. Pneumatic stations loomed into the sky like apparitions. Occasionally a pneumatic shot past with a sharp hiss, then fell toward a station, and the electric bells’ pitiful peals ran across the roof.

  Behind Pavel and Aglaya, two voices suddenly rang out. They both flinched.

  “Ready?” asked the sender.

  “Ready,” replied the conductor.

  “Release moorings!” shouted the sender.

  The pneumatic clanged, then slipped its mooring and rose smoothly.

  “Look, isn’t it like a fairytale bird?” asked Aglaya. “See how it shines.”

  “Yes,” Pavel took Aglaya’s warm hand and squeezed it. Aglaya’s heart stopped from a premonition of unutterable happiness.

  The sender went back in, and Aglaya and Pavel remained alone on the platform, illuminated by the moon’s bright rays.

  “Aglaya, dear Aglaya, I love you, I love you,” Pavel whispered suddenly, feverishly. “I’ve loved you for a long time, madly, and I want you to be my wife. I don’t want you to give me a moment, or a day, a week; I’m not asking for fleeting love from you. I want you for the rest of your life, until death. If you can give that kind of love, and if you want mine, tell me ‘yes’...”

  Aglaya’s head was spinning, her thoughts jumbled. Suddenly she turned away and pulled her hand from Pavel’s hot hands.

  “I’m unworthy of you,” she said.

  “You? You? So pretty, so pure in body and soul… unworthy of me?” whispered Pavel, tossing words out one after the other.

  “Yes... yesterday I was at Karpov’s... for a registered visit.”

  Pavel stepped away from her, staring bitterly at her pale face, as if he could not believe what he was hearing.

  “Yes, yes... I’m telling the truth... Go away... Leave me alone... my darling...” she ended in a whisper.

  “Please...”

  “I beg you, leave me alone...”

  Pavel obeyed and walked away, numb, his legs almost buckling beneath him. Soon he disappeared through the door to the stairwell.

  Aglaya stood with bowed head and arms clutched around herself. Large tears burned one by one down her cheeks, then froze on her breast in little grains of ice.


  A bell rang. The massive shadow of a pneumatic moved slowly in from the right, and before it could land Aglaya closed her eyes and threw herself from the platform, directly under its bright, shiny body.

  Pavel wandered the empty streets for a long time. At three o’clock, crossing Morskoy Street, he looked up reflexively at the bulletins. The red letters jumped in his eyes. The news read: “At pneumatic station number three, citizen no. 4372221 threw herself beneath a pneumatic and was recovered with no signs of life. Cause unknown.”

  First published in Russian: 1906

  Translation by James von Geldern and Anne O. Fisher

  * * *

  1. The author here makes reference to Russia’s first band of revolutionaries, the Decembrists of 1825, who were organized into “Northern” and “Southern” societies.

  2. The Field of Mars is a large park in the center of St. Petersburg that has existed since the eighteenth century. In the story’s “2217,” it is now lush with tropical vegetation, thanks to the city’s “glass roof.”

  VALERY BRYUSOV

  1915

  MUTINY OF THE MACHINES

  A FANTASTIC TALE1

  I

  In order to understand the course of events to be recounted here, it is first necessary to clearly envision how the entirety of life is organized today.

  The accelerated development of technology began in the nineteenth century. Until then, over the preceding two thousand years humanity merely resurrected the discoveries of the ancients. Structures such as Agrippa’s Pantheon, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the great Roman sanitation system, not to mention the great pyramids, compel us to acknowledge that the ancient nations commanded greater technological might than Europe in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the “age of the philosophes.” The same can be concluded from the partial information we have about the ancient Egyptians’ knowledge of electrophysics or the steam engines constructed by the seers of Memphis and Thebes. The only exception was the art of war: the introduction of firearms constituted a significant step (forward or backward, it is hard to say), but nevertheless the “Greek fire” of the Byzantines pales in comparison with gunpowder. For the sake of parity, let us also take into consideration printing, which, by the way, was long known to the Chinese and evident in the Romans’ practice of inscribing tablets from engravings; and Dionysus’ invention of the compass, which begs some stretch of the imagination to be called “technology” despite the ancients’ evident knowledge of magnetism.