The Foundation Pit Read online

  Voshchev and Chiklin sat down on a stone in the middle of the Yard, meaning to go to sleep in a while beneath the awning there. The old man from the Dutch-tile factory recalled Chiklin and walked over to him—until then he had been sitting in the nearest grass, cleansing the dirt from off his body dry fashion, beneath his shirt.

  “What’s brought you here?” Chiklin asked him.

  “Well, I was walking and then they ordered me to remain. ‘Maybe you’re living in vain,’ they said. ‘We need to look into it.’ I kept on silently past, but they reined me in: ‘Stop, kulak!’ And so here I stay—living on potato rations.”

  “It’s all the same to you where you live,” said Chiklin, “just as long as you don’t die!”

  “You’re right there, you know! I can get used to anything—I only pine to begin with. Yes, they’ve even taught me letters in here, now they’re making me start on numbers. They tell me I’ll soon be a proper old proletarian of class—and who’s to say they’re not right?”

  The old man would have talked all night, but Yelisey returned from the foundation pit and brought Chiklin a letter from Prushevsky. Beneath the lantern that lit up the sign of the Organizational Yard, Chiklin read that Nastya was alive and that Zhachev was now driving her every day to the nursery school, where she had come to love the Soviet State and was collecting utility scrap for it60; as for Prushevsky himself, he was lonely and bored now that Kozlov and Safronov had perished, while Zhachev was weeping for them with huge tears.

  “Life is quite hard for me,” wrote comrade Prushevsky, “and I’m afraid I’ll come to love some individual woman or other and marry her, since I possess no social significance. The foundation pit is finished—and come spring we’ll be filling it in with rubble. Nastya, it turns out, knows how to write in big letters, so I’m sending you her little note.”

  Nastya had written to Chiklin: “Liquidate the kulak as a class. Long live Stalin, Kozlov, and Safronov. Uncle Chiklin, Stalin is only one drop less good than Lenin, and Budyonny two drops. Greetings to the poor collective farm, but not to the kulaks.”

  For a long time Chiklin went on whispering these written words and, not knowing how to wrinkle his own face for sorrow and weeping, he was deeply moved all the way through him. Then he set off to get some sleep.

  In the main building of the Organizational Yard there was one huge room, and there everyone slept on the floor thanks to the cold. Some forty or fifty people had opened their mouths and were breathing upwards while beneath the low ceiling a lamp hung in a fog of sighs and swayed gently from some kind of quaking of the earth. Yelisey too was lying amid the floor; his sleeping eyes were almost fully open, watching the burning lamp without blinking. Having found Voshchev, Chiklin lay down beside him and calmed down until a brighter morning.

  In the morning the barefoot collective-farm walkers lined up in file in the OrgYard. Each of the marchers had a flag with a slogan in his hand and a bag with nourishment on his back. They were waiting for the activist, as the collective farm’s very first man of all, in order to learn from him why they were to go into alien places.

  The activist came into the Yard, in common with his vanguard personnel; after arraying the foot walkers in the form of a fivefold star, he stood in the middle of them all and pronounced his say, instructing the walkers to go into the midst of the surrounding poor peasantry and show them the attributes of a collective farm by means of a summons to socialist order since what happened further was going to be bad anyway. Yelisey was holding the longest banner of all and, after submissively hearing the activist out, he set off forward with his usual stride, not knowing where he was to stop.

  That morning there was damp, and cold was blowing from empty and barren places far away. Nor was such a circumstance overlooked by the activist committee.

  “Sabotage!” the activist said mournfully with regard to this chilling wind of nature.

  The poor and middle wanderers set off on this journey of theirs and disappeared far away, in space that was strange. Chiklin went on looking in the wake of the barefoot collectivization, not knowing what should be supposed further, while Voshchev was silent without thought. From a large cloud that stopped over some far and remote fields, rain came down like a wall and wrapped the walkers in the midst of moisture.

  “And where do they think they’re going?” asked a subkulak who, because of his harmfulness, had been secluded away in the OrgYard. Expressing a piece of his mind through the fence, since the activist had forbidden him to go beyond it, the subkulak went on: “We’ve got enough boots here for the next ten years. What on earth do that lot think they’re up to?”

  “Give him one!” said Chiklin to Voshchev.

  Voshchev went up to the subkulak and did him a blow in his face. The subkulak made no more responses.

  Voshchev approached Chiklin with his usual bewilderment about surrounding life.

  “Just look at the collective farm, Chiklin, going out in the world, barefoot and bored.”

  “Being barefoot is what keeps them going,” said Chiklin. “And what do they have to rejoice about—the collective farm has become a matter of course to them.”

  “Most likely Jesus Christ walked in boredom too61—while insignificant rain rained in nature.”

  “There’s no poor peasant as poor as your poor mind,” replied Chiklin. “Christ walked alone, and no one knows why, while here we have massive masses on the move for the sake of existence!”

  The activist was also to be found there in the OrgYard; the past night had passed in vain for him—no directive had descended on the collective farm and so he had released a flow of thought in his own head, but thought brought him terror—of acts of negligence. He was afraid that prosperity might accumulate in private farmsteads and that he might overlook this from sight. At the same time he was wary of excess of zeal—and for this reason he had so far collectivized only the equine livestock, suffering torment over the solitary cows, sheep, and fowl, since in the hands of an elemental kulak privateer even a goat can be a lever of capitalism.

  Holding back the power of his own initiative, the activist stood motionless amid the universal silence of the collective farm, while his subordinate comrades watched his now silent lips, not knowing where to move next. Chiklin and Voshchev left the Yard to go and look for the dead stock, in order to glimpse its fitness.

  After they had gone some distance, they stopped in their tracks; without the labor of man a gate to their right had opened and out onto the street began to emerge calm horses. At a steady pace, without lowering their heads to the growing nourishment on the earth, the horses walked in a close-packed mass along the street and down into a gully that contained water. After drinking their norm, the horses entered the water and stood in it some time for their own cleanliness; they then climbed up onto the dry land of the bank and started back, not losing their formation or compact solidarity. But when they came to the first homes the horses dispersed—one horse stopped beside a thatched roof and began to pull straw from it, another bent down to pick up in her jaws some residual wisps of meager hay, while the more sullen horses entered the farmsteads, took a sheaf each from dear, familiar places, and carried these sheaves out onto the street in their mouths. Each animal took a share of nourishment proportionate to its strength and carefully carried it in the direction of the gate from which all the horses had first emerged. The first horses to arrive stopped outside the shared gate and waited for all the remaining equine mass; only when all had assembled in common did the leading horse push the gate wide open with her head and the entire equine formation move away into the yard with the fodder. There the horses opened their mouths, the nourishment fell from them into a single heap in the middle—and the collectivized livestock then stood around and slowly began to eat, having made its peace in an organized manner and without the attention of man.

  Through a chink in the gate Voshchev watched the animals in fright. He was astonished at the peace of soul of the masticating livestock: it was a
s though the horses were all convinced with precision of the collective-farm meaning of life, while he alone lived and suffered worse than a horse.

  Beyond the horses’ yard was to be found somebody’s indigent hut, standing without land or fence on a bare earthly place. Chiklin and Voshchev went into the hut and noticed there a peasant lying facedown on a bench. His woman was sweeping the floor; seeing guests, she wiped her nose with the end of her headscarf, as a result of which customary tears at once began to flow.

  “What’s up?” Chiklin asked her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, oh, my darlings!” pronounced the woman—and began to weep still more densely.

  “Dry up now and talk!” Chiklin brought her to reason.

  “It’s my old man—he’s been lying there with his face buried since I don’t know when. ‘Stuff some nourishment into my insides, woman!’ he says. ‘I’m lying here all empty, my soul’s departed out of all my flesh. Quick!’ he yells, ‘I’m frightened I’ll fly away. Put some weight onto my shirt!’ In the evening I tie the samovar to his belly . . . Oh when in the world will something or other set in?”

  Chiklin went up to the peasant and turned him over. He was indeed light and thin; his pale eyes had turned to stone and did not express even timidity. Chiklin bent down close to him.

  “You breathing?”

  “When I remember, I sigh,” weakly replied the man.

  “What if you forget to breathe?”

  “Then I’ll die.”

  “Maybe you don’t sense the meaning of life,” said Voshchev to the supine man. “Just wait a little, be patient.”

  The wife of the man of the house was little by little, but with precision, sizing up the men who had arrived, and her tears imperceptibly dried because of the causticness of her eyes.

  “He sensed everything, comrades, he saw everything clear in his soul! But when our horse was taken away into organization, then he lay down and stopped. As for me, at least I have a cry now and then—but not him!”

  “More’s the pity. Tears would do him good,” advised Voshchev.

  “That’s what I keep telling him. ‘How can you just lie there in silence?’ I say. ‘The authorities will be frightened!’ But as for me—and what I’m saying is God’s truth, I can see you’re good men—I burst all into tears every time I go out. And if the comrade activist sees me—yes, he looks everywhere, he does, he’s counted up every last little chip of wood—well, this is what he says: ‘Weep, woman, weep, weep all you can—it’s just that the sun of the new life has risen and the light hurts your benighted eyes.’ And his voice is calm and even and I know he won’t do me no harm, so I weep away all I can . . .”

  “So it’s not long since your man’s been existing without diligence of soul?” inquired Voshchev.

  “It’s since he stopped knowing me as a wife, yes, you could say it’s since then.”

  “He’s got a horse for a soul,” said Chiklin. “Let him live empty for a while now, let the wind blow through him.”

  The woman opened her mouth, but she remained without sound, because Voshchev and Chiklin left through the door.

  Another hut stood on a large piece of land enclosed by wattle fencing; inside this hut a peasant was lying in an empty coffin, closing his eyes at the least sound as if he had passed away. An icon lamp had been burning over the head of the half deceased for several weeks, and from time to time the man lying in the coffin would himself pour a little oil into it from a bottle. Voshchev leaned his hand against the forehead of the one resting in peace and sensed that this person was warm. The peasant felt all this and silenced his breathing completely, wanting to turn cooler on the outside. He clenched his teeth and did not permit air into his own depth.

  “Now he’s gone colder,” said Voshchev.

  From out of all his own benighted powers the peasant was trying to stop the inner beating of life, but long years of momentum made life unable to come to an end in him.

  “You’re a right one, you power that esteems me,” the supine man thought betweentimes. “Nevertheless, I’ll wear you out in the end—so why not cease of your own accord?”

  “Seems he’s got warmer again,” Voshchev discovered as time expired.

  “So the subkulak power still has no fear,” pronounced Chiklin.

  The peasant’s heart had, of its own accord, risen up into his soul, into the cramped space of the throat62, and it had clenched tight there, releasing the heat of dangerous life into his outer skin. The peasant twitched his legs, in order to help his heart to quiver, but his heart was exhausted without air and was unable to labor. The peasant gaped his mouth wide and cried out from the grief of death, pitying his intact bones against decomposition into dust, his red-blooded power of body against decay as pus, his eyes against the disappearing light of day, and his home and yard against eternal orphanhood.

  “The dead make no noise,” Voshchev said to the peasant.

  “I won’t,” accordingly replied the supine man—and went still, happy to have pleased the authorities.

  “He’s cooling,” said Voshchev, feeling the peasant’s neck.

  “Put out the icon lamp,” said Chiklin. “He’s got his eyes shut tight—and a light burning above him! There’s certainly no miserliness here on behalf of the Revolution!”

  Out in the fresh air again Chiklin and Voshchev met the activist—he was on his way to the reading hut on cultural revolution matters63. After that, he would also have to go the rounds of all the middle-peasant private holders still left without the collective farm, in order to convince them of the irrationality of fenced-off farmstead capitalism.

  Having been organized in advance, the collective-farm women and older girls were waiting on their feet in the reading hut.

  “Good day, activizing comrade!” they all said at once.

  “Greetings to the cadre!” thoughtfully replied the activist, and stood for a while in silent consideration. “And now let us repeat the letter ‘A’—listen to my announcements and write!”

  The women stretched out on the floor, since all of the reading hut was empty, and began to write on boards with pieces of plaster. Chiklin and Voshchev also sat down below, wishing to reinforce their knowledge in the field of the alphabet.

  “Which words begin with the letter ‘A’?” asked the activist.

  One happy girl got up onto her knees and replied with all the speed and vigor of her reason: “Avant-garde, activist committee, alleluia-monger64, advance, arch-leftist, anti-fascist! All take the hard sign65, but an arch-leftist stands alone!”

  “Correct, Makarovna,” evaluated the activist. “And now everyone write these words systematically down.”

  The women and girls diligently bent closer towards the floor and began insistently writing letters, using the scratchy plaster. In the meantime the activist gazed out of the window, pondering some further path, or else pining because of his own lonely consciousness.

  “Why are they writing the hard sign?” said Voshchev.

  The activist looked around.

  “Because it’s from words that party lines and slogans are designated, and the hard sign’s more useful than the soft one. It’s the soft sign that should be abolished. The hard sign’s inevitable for us—it makes for toughness and precision of formulation. Do you all understand?”

  “Yes, we all understand,” they all said.

  “And now write on further! Concepts beginning with ‘B.’ Speak, Makarovna!”

  Makarovna got back up again and, with trustfulness before science, began to speak: “Bolshevik, bourgeois, boss, bounty and benefit of the collective farm, bravo, bravo Leninists! A hard sign at the end of Bolshevik—and also after collective farm, because of the bogs and soft places!”

  “You forgot bureaucraticism,” decreed the activist. “Well, get writing, the rest of you! Makarovna, you run along to the church for me and light my pipe.”

  “Leave that to me,” said Chiklin. “Don’t tear the people away from mind.”

/>   The activist stuffed some crumbs of burdock into his pipe, and Chiklin set off to light it from a flame. The church stood on the edge of the village—immediately beyond it began the desolation of autumn and the eternally passive acquiescence of nature. Chiklin looked at this beggarly silence and at the distant bushes freezing in the clayey fields, but he was unable for the time being to come up with any retort.

  Close to the church grew the old grass of oblivion and there were no paths or other signs of human passing—people had evidently not been praying in the church for a long time. Chiklin made his way through the thick of the goosefoot and burdock and then stepped up onto the church porch. There was no one inside the cool vestibule—only a sparrow, huddled and clenched, was living in the corner66. But not even the sparrow took fright at Chiklin; he just looked in silence at a man, evidently meaning to die soon in the darkness of autumn.

  Many candles were burning inside the temple. The light of the sad, silent wax gave a clear enough definition to the whole interior of the building, up to the very base of the cupola; and the saints’ clean faces looked with an expression of indifference into the dead air, like people living in the light of that other, peaceful world—but the church was empty67.

  Chiklin lit the pipe from a neighboring candle and then saw that up by the pulpit someone was smoking: yes, there on one of the steps up to the pulpit a man was having a smoke. Chiklin went over to him.

  “Are you from the comrade activist?” asked the smoker.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter, I can tell by the pipe.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I used to be a priest, but now I’ve detached myself from my soul and got myself a foxtrot hairdo. Have a look!”

  The priest took off his cap and showed Chiklin his head, which had a girl’s hairdo.