THE VOYAGER

by Oleg Bazunoff

. (Novy Mir: 1987, no. 6 & 7)

VERTICALITY

(An excerpt from Part I, pp. 21-23)

Russian Translator:

Benjamin Sher

The concept of the sea -- and here, I hope, you will fully agree with me -- would seem to exclude, for the most part, the concept of the vertical. If, traveling the waves and measureless watery expanses, you were to descry the zig-zag swaying masts and smoke-stacks of innumerable ships plying the world's four oceans, you would hardly assert that these masts and smoke-stacks encompass or define, -- at least not fundamentally -- the seascapes stretched out before you. No, seascapes are unarguably dominated by horizontals. In fact, these horizontals hold complete sway over them.

And yet, notwithstanding the above, I would like to demonstrate here and now, to assert and proclaim to the four corners of the earth that every vertical, however humble or slight, can stand in a direct, immediate and, yes, even flagrant relationship with the great oceanic expanses. This vertical may assume the shape of anything from a lighthouse warning the mariner of a promontory looming out of the dark or of menacing rocks peeping from below, -- or else this vertical might rise somewhat less naturally or fortuitously out of the deep, -- an object that nonetheless helps us to find our bearings on the map. Yes, this vertical could be planted firmly far from the raging sea, far from the looming promontory, in fact, it could be something utterly ordinary, utterly nondescript and unassuming, for instance... the chimney of a factory.

My dear reader, no doubt it must have occurred to you at some point in time to observe the smile on the face of an awakening child, a smile that irresistibly, infectiously elicits from you a reciprocating smile akin to it.

Surely, you must have also observed how this smile breaks out on his face and how, a moment later, nothing remains of his face but that very smile. Besides, should you plumb the depths of your memory, you might well come upon this smile not only obliquely (as above) but from within, that is, you might encounter your own smile engraved somewhere on the lower depths of your mind, you might come upon it on your own awakening child's face.

This is often rather easy, far easier than may seem at first glance, when we consider the blessed few whose smile goes on blossoming warmly and radiantly while they are waking up. Even I have succeeded from time to time in capturing on my grown lips this childlike smile. I used to do this until... And ever since... No, even now, waking up in the morning or even in the very heat of a desolate night, you sense a something resembling this blissfully wandering smile hatching in your soul. And even if it doesn't quite manage to break out into a smile, it nevertheless curls up into a warm something in your breast.

I say "often" because you are not always awakened in the middle of the night by some crude noise from the street or by the din and uproar and racket of the apartment next door. I say "often" because sometimes, in fact, quite often, you are awakened in the middle of the night by a shriek from within, by your own suppressed and pitiful cry. And from the moment you first hear this shriek in the night you know that neither warmth nor bliss shall curl up in your soul because at this very hour of the desolate night your heart beats furiously, forcefully, uncomprehendingly, in your breast.

It is just such a process of awakening in the morning or then again in the heat of the desolate night that fascinates me. For instance, at three o'clock in the morning...

Imagine that for some inexplicable reason having little or nothing to do with shrieks or moans, whether from within or from without, you wake up at three o'clock in the morning. You lie awake in the warmth and customary coziness of your bed. In spite of the totally inopportune nature of this awakening, a blissful something, timid and tentative, begins to curl up in you. Your entire body is suffused with a sleepy languor, while your brain blissfully contemplates plunging once more into a blissful sleep. Yet, all of a sudden, at that very instant in that selfsame brain of yours, though possibly in a different section or region -- sometimes you are convinced that you could literally touch this region with your finger -- there looms something totally at odds with this anticipated bliss, something that sends chills down your spine, turning you to ice, something that has the feel of cold steel.

Imagine an ogre, tall and gaunt, in the person of a covetous knight or, then, again, of a covetous sorceress. Imagine again a something lying in the palms of their hands, a something on which they have trained their full concentration, image now this something suddenly threatened with seizure by alien hands. Oh, I don't mean this in earnest at all, I mean it in jest, in innocent good fun. Imagine that first instant, that tiny fraction of an instant when their hands tremble, when horror and confusion sweep, however fleetingly, over their faces. A fraction of a second later, that same hand, no longer trembling, clenches its fist like the claw of a crustacean, and woe unto him who endeavors to loosen this something from the grip of the crustacean, under its all-consuming glance. You could free its claws only by freeing the soul of the ogre imprisoned within the body of the immortal knight or sorceress.

Let us turn back now to the thought that issues like an icy wind out of the convolutions of your brain, carrying off instantly all of the accumulated store of serenity -- like heat from a heated room -- from your languid body. Brittle and transparent like a splinter of glass or ice.... By now it is too late. Too late to shake off all of those ogres and their claws and the cold steel jabbed between your shoulder-blades. And you shall not sleep one wink this morning. And only then shall you catch sight of the factory chimney -- your sole comfort and consolation -- yes, the selfsame chimney looming before your very window, the immemorial chimney boldly protruding into the sky like the finger of a man.

And this chimney, it should be noted, holds this promise of hope and consolation only when you are not besieged by the unrelieved darkness of a desolate winter night. And you would hardly consider on such a desolate night -- now would you? -- of getting out of bed or crawling over to the window sill in the frigid air or shoving your unruly head through the side window in order to scour the gloomy and frozen sky, the unrelieved Egyptian darkness of the northern night for sight of the needle, the soot-black chimney protruding into the sky.

Yes, the chimney can bring you solace only in the spring and summer when, windows wide open, you sleep under the heavens already trembling with the early light.

And so, early one morning, you catch sight of your beloved chimney protruding into the heavens, pale and trembling like a bloodless, ashen shade. As you lie in bed, your arms stretched out horizontally along your body, everything takes on more and more radiance and the sky, no longer grey and pale, sheds its ashen face that until then showed not a drop of blood.

Pure, delicate colors now swim into view. Against the backdrop of a chimney flushed with color the chirping of a multitude of birds awakening just then will -- listen! -- fall on your ears. Already in the space organized by, around and over the chimney, in the pure, transparent air, the kish have spread their wings. Great and small birds now scurry past your window, singly or in groups, at varying altitudes. And as they attend to their affairs, they bring to mind the hurling of stones.

Oh, how wondrous, how splendid when early in the morning multitudes of our feathered friends begin to scurry furiously above the roofs of our city, around our chimney and above it...

Yet, this is far from all! Suddenly the moment has arrived -- the moment you have sought to capture with every fiber of your being but which, alas, has nearly always eluded you. Now your chimney -- bricks and ashes -- comes back to life. In the wink of an eye it burns like molten copper and, howling triumphantly, it hails the sun.

And all the while you are lying in bed with your arms stretched out alongside your body, your head resting on the hard, spartan pillow, your eyes concentrating as before on the space organized by the chimney, on the individual birds melting into the enveloping air.

You are still in bed, but the unresolved combinations, the harsh formulas, the yawning gaps are gradually softening to a blur. Thoroughly acclimated to the space organized by the chimney, your consciousness begins sliding strangely, obliquely, imperceptibly, gently, along a diagonal, across all sorts of obstructions, beyond the canal, beyond the island, beyond the candy factory, the fields, the forests -- beyond childhood itself. And it goes on sliding towards the shores that compass the sea and towards the measureless expanses and depths.... Lullabied by this blissful sliding of a consciousness fatigued beyond all measure, you at long last drop off to sleep.

In this sleep of yours a smile may steal playfully across your lips. Not the luminous, all-dissolving smile of your childhood, but the smile of a human being who, though spent and battered, has caught a fleeting sight of tranquility in this refuge of his sleep.