The Foundation Pit Read online

  “Mind your own business, scum! We can appoint a tsar when it suits us—and we can knock him down with the breath of a single sigh . . . And you—clear off!”

  At that point Chiklin seized the peasant across his torso and carried him outside, where he threw him into the snow; out of greed the peasant had remained unmarried, expending all his own flesh in the accumulation of possessions, in the happiness of surety of existence—and so now he did not know what to feel.

  “Liquidated, am I?” he said from the snow. “Well you look out! There’s no me today, and there’ll be no you tomorrow . . . And that’s how it’ll end—the only person who’ll ever reach socialism is that one important man of yours.”

  Past another four yards the hammerer again let out a roar of hate. Out of the building leaped its poor inhabitant, with a pancake in his hands. But the bear knew that this was the employer who had beaten him with a tree root when exhaustion had stopped him from pushing the beam that turned the millstone. This little wretch of a peasant had forced a bear to work instead of the wind, so as not to pay tax, and he had kept on whining and whingeing as if he himself were the one being exploited, and he had eaten his meals underneath the blankets with his woman. When his woman got in the family way, the miller had carried out abortions with his own bare hands, loving only his first son, whom he had long ago decreed away to join the communists in the city.

  “Have a bite to eat, Misha!” The peasant offered the hammerer his pancake.

  The bear wrapped the pancake around one of his paws and gave the kulak a clout over the ear with this piece of baked wadding, whereupon the peasant moaned and fell to the ground.

  “Vacate poor-peasant property!” said Chiklin to the supine man. “Leave the collective farm—and don’t you dare live another day in the world!”

  The well-to-do man lay there for a while, then came to his senses.

  “Show me your papers then, if you’re truly an authorized body.”

  “What kind of body am I to you?” said Chiklin. “I’m a nobody. The only body around here is the Party.”

  “Show me the Party then. I want to take a close look at it.”

  Chiklin gave a scant smile.

  “You wouldn’t recognize it, not if it were staring you in the face—I can barely sense it myself! Report to the raft at once, you capitalism, you bastard!”

  “Let him sail the seas. Here today and gone tomorrow—isn’t that right?84” pronounced Nastya. “Bastards like him make life boring.”

  Chiklin and the hammerer further liberated another six huts that had been built with the flesh of poor laborers, and then returned to the OrgYard where the masses, now purged of kulaks, were standing in expectation of something.

  The activist checked the newly arrived kulak class against his own social stratification register, found complete precision, and rejoiced in the action of Chiklin and the forge hammerer. In return, Chiklin showed his approval of the activist: “Now that’s what I call consciousness! Your sense of the classes is just like an animal’s85.”

  The bear was unable to express a piece of his mind to them and so, after standing separately for a while, he set off back to the forge, through falling snow within which flies were buzzing. Only Nastya watched him leave, and she felt pity for this old, scorched human being.

  Prushevsky had already managed to complete the raft out of logs; now he was looking at everyone with readiness.

  “You filth!” said Zhachev. “What are you doing, staring like a man apart? Live more boldly—hug and squeeze till we all give, then we can live! You think what we’ve got here are human beings? Not a bit of it! What you see here is just outer skin—there’s a long way to go before any humans come into being! That’s what grieves me!”

  In accord with the activist’s word, the kulaks bent down and began to push the raft down towards the river. Zhachev crawled along behind the kulak class—in order to guarantee it a sure departure downriver and out to sea, and to calm himself still more deeply that socialism would come to be and that Nastya would receive it as her wedding dowry, while he, Zhachev, would most likely perish all the sooner, as a tired prejudice.

  Liquidating the kulaks into the distance86 brought Zhachev no calm; he even felt worse, though it was not clear why. For a long time he observed how the raft floated systematically down the snowy flowing river and the evening wind ruffled the dark dead water pouring, amid chilled farmlands, into its own remote abyss—and in his heart it was getting melancholy and boring. Socialism, after all, had no need for a stratum of sad freaks, and he too would soon be liquidated into the distant silence.

  The kulak class on the raft was all looking in one direction—at Zhachev; these people wanted to take note of their birthplace forever, together with the last happy man there.

  By then the kulak river transport had begun to disappear around a bend, behind the bushes on the bank, and Zhachev was losing the appearance of the class enemy.

  “Fa-are we-ell, parasites!” Zhachev shouted down the river.

  “Fa-are we-ell!” responded the kulaks sailing off to the sea.

  From the OrgYard above him struck up forward-summoning music; Zhachev crawled hurriedly up the steep clay slope to the triumph of the collective farm87, even though he knew that only former participants in imperialism were exulting there—not counting Nastya and the rest of childhood.

  The activist had placed the wireless loudspeaker out on the OrgYard porch, and from it came the march of a great campaign, while the entire collective farm, together with the guests who had made their way over on foot, was stamping joyfully on the spot. With their shining faces, the collective-farm peasants looked as if they had just been scrubbed, and in the emptiness of their souls there was now no pity or regret for anything and no knowing anything, and it felt cool. When the music changed, Yelisey went out into the center, slammed down one foot, and began to dance over the earth, not bending in any way or blinking his white eyes; he was moving like a piston, alone amid the standers, and working his bones and torso with precision. Gradually the peasants got into the swing of things and began to circle around one another, while the women merrily raised their arms and began to move their legs beneath their skirts. The guests threw down their bags, called the local girls over, and hurtled about close to the ground, moving spiritedly—and as a treat for themselves they kissed their new collective-farm girlfriends. The wireless music alarmed life still more; the passive menfolk yelled out exclamations of satisfaction while the more progressive ones developed the further tempo of the festival in all directions, and even the collectivized horses, hearing the din of human happiness, filed over one by one to the OrgYard and began to whinny.

  The snowy wind fell silent; an unclear moon came to light in a distant sky that was now emptied of storm clouds and blizzards, a sky so deserted that it allowed for eternal freedom, and so sinister that freedom was unthinkable without friendship.

  Beneath this sky, on pure snow already spotted with meat flies, the entire people celebrated in comradely triumph. Even those who had lived a long time in the world—they too got moving and were stamping, not remembering themselves.

  “So, Mother RusSSR!” one forgotten peasant called out in delight, showing off his skills and slapping himself on the belly, the cheeks, and the mouth. “Come on lads—make our right royal State your mate! Dance around her—she needs a fella!”

  “What is she?” called out a guest from nearby in the passing of the dance. “A wench or a widow?”

  “A wench!” replied the moving peasant. “Can’t you tell from the tricks she gets up to?”

  “Let her get up to her tricks!” agreed the guest from elsewhere. “Let her put on airs! We’ll tame her yet! She’ll shape up fine!”

  Nastya had climbed down from Chiklin’s arms and was also stamping on the spot beside the hurtling peasants, because she felt like it. Zhachev was crawling between everyone, hacking down the legs of those who got in his way; as for the guest who had referred to our little g
irl of a RussSSR as a wench and wanted to marry her off to a private holder, Zhachev gave him a thump in the ribs to put paid to his hopes: “Don’t you dare think whatever drifts into your head! Or are you wanting to earn yourself a place on the raft? We’ll sit you there just like that.”

  The guest had already taken fright that he had appeared here.

  “I won’t think anything ever again, comrade cripple. From now on I’ll whisper.”

  Chiklin gazed for a long time into the exultant thick of the people and felt, in his own breast, the peace of goodness; from the height of the porch he could see the lunar purity of the distant scale of things, the sadness of light that had gone still, and the submissive sleep of the entire world—a world that had cost so much labor and pain to organize that this had been forgotten by everyone, so that they would not know the terror of living on further.

  “Don’t get chilled for long, Nastya!” called Chiklin. “Come here!”

  “I’m not cold at all—people are breathing here!” said Nastya, as she ran away from Zhachev, who was bellowing affectionately.

  “Rub your hands together or you’ll go numb! Remember—the air’s big and you’re little!”

  “I’ve rubbed them already—so sit there and be quiet!”

  The wireless suddenly broke off in mid-tune. The collective, however, was unable to stop until the activist said, “Halt—until the next sound!”

  Prushevsky managed to fix the wireless in a brief time, but there was no longer music to be heard, only a human being: “This is an important announcement. Lay in stocks of willow bark!”

  And at this point the wireless again broke off. After hearing the announcement, the activist went deep into thought for memory, in order not to forget about the willow-bark campaign88 and become a byword throughout the district for negligence and blind overlooking—as had happened to him last time, when he had forgotten about the organization of a Day of Brushwood, and now the entire collective farm was still without withes. Prushevsky again began to repair the wireless, and time passed as the engineer painstakingly adjusted the mechanism with chilled hands, but he got nowhere with the work since he did not know for sure: Would the wireless really grant comfort to the poor and would a sweet voice from somewhere or other sound for him alone?

  The activist meanwhile was afraid of neglecting down the mood of the collective farm; lest it die down altogether, he struck up music with his own lips and, all the same, the collective farm began to dance to these mouth sounds. Yelisey, who had nearly gone still in the silence that had set in, returned to his stamping and dancing, and the entire collective now compacted in the yard began, as before, to make the noise of its as yet insensible but already essential happiness.

  When the activist was growing hoarse from long lip play, though the people had not yet quietened down and were still moving their torsos, Chiklin shouted into the collective farm: “Do you sense anything now?”

  “Yes, we do,” replied the collective farm.

  “And what is it you sense?”

  “We sense everything—only not ourselves.”

  Chiklin looked for a while at these dreams and opinions and then came down from up on the porch, so as to dance too, just as he had danced in his youth with the young women, beneath the small branches.

  “Play seriously, active comrade, so we get joy and pity half and half!”

  The activist began to play more loudly, and made Prushevsky sing with his lips too—to help him.

  Chiklin, now in the thickness of the people, forgot about all the remnants of his own life and began working his legs so rapidly that the snow beneath him disappeared and the damp earth dried up. Yelisey drew close to Chiklin and tried not to fall behind him in the zeal of happiness, but he found this beyond him. Chiklin was looking at Yelisey more and more and losing the power of the dance, until he came to a total standstill. Not noticing this, Yelisey went on stamping further, never blinking his chilled eyes. Chiklin seized hold of him, not knowing how to stop a human being, and Yelisey collapsed onto him, numb and involuntary. Chiklin lowered Yelisey towards the ground; Yelisey was breathing silently and infrequently, the look in his eyes as empty as if a wind had passed through his body and carried away the warm sense of life.

  “Feeling bad, are you?” asked Chiklin.

  “Feeling nothing,” Yelisey was able to say.

  Chiklin covered Yelisey’s eyes with his own cap, so that Yelisey would be unable to look anywhere and would forget himself. The activist gave a few more sounds and then fell silent, for his lips had swollen and his consciousness, above all, had begun to ache from forced breathing. But the people did not stop its universal dance—it had grown so used to the constant tempo of joy that it now knew it by heart and went on stamping on the spot from memory. “Let them exult a bit!” thought Chiklin, having first whispered the words to himself.

  He moved away towards Zhachev, who had taken shelter beneath the fence and was clasping Nastya against his body, warming her with his stomach and chest; the mutilated man had even pulled his shirt up, so the child should make use of his bodily warmth to the full. The little girl was already sleeping deeply, and Zhachev was satisfied that he was cherishing and warming not a thoughtful idea, which you forget about in your sleep, but a future, unknown human being, who was breathing close to him.

  “Where’s Voshchev?” asked Chiklin, bending down towards the freak because of the noise of the speechlessly dancing collective farm.

  “He must be asleep somewhere,” said Zhachev. “Scum like him don’t snuff it easily.”

  “No, he’s been sleepless for a long time,” pronounced Chiklin.

  “He knows that he lives in vain, that’s why he can’t sleep,” explained the veteran.

  Midnight, probably, was already near; the moon was to be found high over the fences and the meek, aged village, and the dead burdocks were shining, covered with fine snow that had frozen solid. A lost fly tried to settle on an icy burdock, but immediately tore itself away and flew off, buzzing in the height of the moon’s light like a lark beneath the sun.

  Gradually, without stopping its heavy, stomping dance, the collective farm began to sing too, in a feeble voice. The words in this song could not be understood, but all the same a plaintive happiness could be heard in them, and the tune of a wandering human being.

  “Zhachev!” said Chiklin. “Go and put a stop to this caper! They dance on and on—you’d think they’d died of joy!”

  Zhachev crawled away with Nastya into the OrgHouse, settled her down to lie there, and made his way back out.

  “All right, you organized lot, that’s enough of your dancing! You’ve had your joy, you bastards!”

  But the collective farm was too carried away to heed Zhachev’s words, and it went on stamping weightily on the spot, covering itself with song.

  “Want to earn something from me, do you? Prepare to receive!”

  Zhachev crawled down from the porch, inserted himself into the midst of the vainly bustling legs, and began simply taking hold of people by their lower ends and overturning them onto the ground for a rest. People were collapsing like empty trousers; Zhachev even felt sorry that they shut up so quickly and probably did not even sense his hands.

  After laying the entire collective farm out to sleep, Zhachev monitored that there was no further movement from anyone and, for sedation, did one wavering peasant a blow in the head with the stump of his leg, as a result of which this momentary waverer fell asleep. The horses, seeing such a thing, began to back out of the OrgYard; once they were out on the street, they rushed back at a gallop to their own shared enclosure.

  “Where on earth’s Voshchev?” fretted Chiklin. “What’s he searching for in the distance, the petty proletarian?”

  Voshchev did not appear, and Chiklin set off to look for him after midnight. He passed the whole desolate street of the village to the very end, but nowhere was there a human being to be seen; only the bear in the forge was snoring into all the lunar surroundin
gs, and from time to time the blacksmith gave a small cough.

  It was quiet round about, and splendid. Chiklin stopped in a bewildered urge to think. As before, the bear was snoring submissively, mustering his powers for the morrow’s work and a new sense of life. Never more would the bear see his kulak tormentors—and he would rejoice now in his own existence. Now, probably, the hammerer would hammer at horseshoes and iron wheel hoops with still greater zeal in his heart, since there existed in the world an unknown power that had left in the village only the middle people he liked, those who silently made useful substance and felt partial happiness; as for universal perfect joy and the whole of life’s precise meaning, they must now be pining in the breast of the earth-digging proletarian class—so that Chiklin’s heart and the hammerer’s should simply hope and breathe, so that their toiling hand should be true and steadfast.

  Chiklin closed with care some gates that had been left open, and then looked around to check that everything was in order street-wise; he noticed a peasant coat perishing on the track, picked it up, and took it to the entrance room of a nearby hut—let it be preserved for the benefit of labor.

  His body inclining forward from trustful hope, Chiklin set off through backyards to look further for Voshchev. He clambered over structures made from wattle, walked past the clay walls of dwellings, reinforced staves that were keeling over, and constantly saw how these scraggy fences were the start of an endless and empty winter. In so alien a world Nastya could easily go ahead and freeze to death, since the earth is no place for childhood that feels the cold; only the bear could endure his life here—and even he had gone gray-haired from oppression. “I hadn’t even been born and you were already lying here, you poor thing without movement!” came the nearby voice of Voshchev, a human being. “That means you’ve been enduring a long time. Come in and warm yourself now. Come in out of the cold!”