The Foundation Pit Read online

  There in the collective farm Prushevsky closed his face with his hands. Suppose that reason is the synthesis of all feelings, the place where all the currents of alarming movements are stilled into resignation—but then what gives rise to the alarm and the movement? This was something he did not know; all he knew was that the passion of reason is the pull towards death, that this is the only thing reason can feel—and then, perhaps, he might come full circle, returning to the origin of feelings, to the evening summer day of his never repeated tryst.

  “Comrade! Is it you who’s come to join us for the cultural revolution?”

  Prushevsky lowered his hands from his eyes. Passing him by, young women and village youth were walking to the reading hut. One young woman was standing in front of him, in a pair of felt boots and with a poor shawl on her trusting head; her eyes were looking at the engineer with surprised love, since the power of the knowledge hidden in this man was beyond her understanding; she would have agreed to love this gray-haired stranger devotedly and forever, she would have agreed to bear his children, to torment her own body day after day—if only he would teach her to know the entire world and to participate in it. Youth was nothing to her, her own happiness was nothing to her—close by she could feel a hurtling, ardent movement, her heart was uplifted from the wind of universal striving life, but she could not speak out the words of her joy and now she was standing and asking to be taught these words, to be taught to feel the whole world’s light in her head so that she could help it to shine. The girl still did not know whether or not the learned man would come with her and she was looking indefinitely, ready to study again with the activist.

  “I’ll come with you in a moment,” said Prushevsky.

  The girl wanted to rejoice and shout out but she did not, lest Prushevsky take offense.

  “Let’s go,” pronounced Prushevsky.

  The girl walked ahead, showing the engineer the way even though it was impossible to lose the way; she wanted, however, to show her gratitude, but she possessed nothing for a gift to the man following behind her.

  The members of the collective farm had burned up all the coal in the forge, expended every last bit of iron into useful articles, repaired all the dead stock, and then left the building, anguished that labor had finished and that the collective farm might now fall into shortfall. The hammerer had exhausted himself still earlier—he had gone out to eat a little snow because of thirst, and, while the snow was melting in his mouth, the bear had dozed off and collapsed down with his entire torso, into the peace of retirement.

  Having gone outside, the collective farm seated itself in a line by the fence and began to sit, surveying the entire village; the snow melted beneath the motionless peasants. Now that he had stopped laboring, Voshchev again suddenly got lost in thought in one place.

  “Wake up!” Chiklin said to him. “Lie down with the bear and forget everything.”

  “Truth, comrade Chiklin, knows no forgetting.”

  Chiklin seized hold of Voshchev and dumped him down against the sleeping hammerer.

  “Lie down and be quiet,” he said over him. “The bear breathes —and you can’t! The proletariat endures—and you’re afraid! What a bastard you are!”

  Voshchev snuggled up to the hammerer, warmed himself, and fell asleep.

  Onto the village street, his steed quivering beneath him, galloped a rider from district headquarters.

  “Where’s the activist committee?” he shouted to the sitting collective farm, without losing speed.

  “Gallop straight on!” the collective farm announced the way. “Just don’t turn either left or right!”

  “I won’t!” shouted the rider, already far distant—and against his thigh was beating only his pouch of directives.

  A few minutes later the same horseman came racing back, waving his record book in the air so that the wind would dry the ink of the activist’s signature. Kicking up snow and ripping up the soil in passing, the well-fed horse urgently disappeared in the far distance.

  “What a horse—and the bureaucrat’s ruining him!” thought the collective farm. “It bores us to watch.”

  Chiklin took from the forge an iron rod and went off to give it to the child by way of a toy. He loved silently bringing her different objects, in order that the little girl should speechlessly understand the joy he felt towards her.

  Zhachev had woken long ago. But Nastya, her weary mouth half open, remained sadly and involuntarily asleep. Chiklin carefully scrutinized the child: Had the child been harmed in any way since the previous day, was the child’s body fully intact? But the child was entirely in order—her face was just burning with the inner strength of early childhood. The activist’s tear dropped onto the directive—Chiklin at once paid attention to this. Just as the evening before, the leading man was sitting motionless at his desk. It had been with a sense of satisfaction that he had sent off, with the district horseman, his completed report of the liquidation of the class enemy and had summed up in it all the successes of his activity; but now a fresh directive had descended on him, signed, for some reason, over the heads of both the district and the region, by provincial headquarters—and this directive now lying here drew attention to such scarcely desirable phenomena as overreaching, overzealousness, reckless opportunism, and all kinds of sliding away, down left and right slopes, from the sharpened edge of the Party’s precise line; furthermore, the directive also called upon activists to keep an especially sharp and vigilant eye upon the middle peasant; if he was rushing so eagerly into the collective farms, might not this general fact constitute a mysterious plot being executed at the instigation of the subkulak masses—as if their aim was to sweep into the collective farms like a raging torrent, washing away the banks of the leadership and wearing the authorities into submission.

  “According to the latest materials now in the hand of the provincial committee,” concluded the directive, “it is apparent, for example, that the activist committee of the General Line Collective Farm has already gone rushing forward into the leftist quagmire of rightist opportunism. The organizer of the local collective has asked the aforesaid organization whether there is anything after the collective farm and the commune, anything higher and brighter to which he can forthwith dispatch the local poor- and middle-peasant masses who cannot be held back from hurtling forwards into the far distance of history, towards the summit of universal and unprecedented times. This comrade asks to be sent model statutes of such an organization, together with appropriate forms, a pen and nib, and two liters of ink. He does not understand the magnitude of the gamble he is taking on the sincere, and fundamentally sound, attraction felt by the middle peasant towards the collective farm. No one can disagree that such a comrade is a wrecker and saboteur of the Party91, an objective enemy of the proletariat, and that he should forthwith and forever be removed from the leadership.”

  At this point the activist’s weakened heart had shuddered, and he had wept onto the provincial paper.

  “What is it, you bastard?” spoke Zhachev.

  But the activist did not answer Zhachev. When in recent time had he felt happy? When had he last eaten or slept his fill, or loved even one poor-peasant maiden? He had felt as though he were delirious, his heart so burdened that it could hardly go on beating; only outside himself had he tried to organize happiness and, at least in prospect, deserve for himself a post at district headquarters.

  “Reply, parasite—or it will be your turn to receive from me!” spoke Zhachev once more. “Damaged our republic, have you, you vermin?”

  After pulling the directive down from the table, Zhachev began to study it in person on the floor.

  “I want to go to my mama!” said Nastya as she awoke.

  Chiklin bent down towards the bored, lonely child.

  “Mama has died, my little one. Now you have me!”

  “Why are you carrying me about? Where are the four seasons of the year? Feel the terrible heat I have under my skin! Take my shirt off or it’
ll catch fire and I’ll have nothing to wear when I get better!”

  Chiklin felt Nastya in all the places of her body. She was hot and damp and her bones were protruding plaintively from within her: how tender and quiet the surrounding world must be in order for her to live!

  “Cover me up—I want to sleep. I’m not going to remember anything, because it’s sad being ill, isn’t it?”

  Chiklin took off all his outer clothing, took away both Zhachev’s padded coat and the activist’s, and wrapped Nastya up with all this warm substance. She closed her eyes and, in warmth and in sleep, she felt all light, as if she had begun to fly amid cool air. In the course of current time Nastya had grown a little, and she was coming to look more and more like her mother. The little girl could even have been Chiklin’s daughter—that, indeed, was what her mother wanted—but the child would hardly, in that case, have been any better or more intelligent. The little girl, most likely, was conceived by a workingman no different from Chiklin. So the flesh in the child was from the same class cauldron; and if someone had rejoiced in the caresses of the woman who had died, such caresses are no qualification for a child—humanity is something different.

  “Damned cunt of a kulak!” determined Zhachev with regard to the activist. “I knew all along. So what’s to be done with this member now?”

  “What do they announce there?” asked Chiklin.

  “They write that it is impossible to disagree with them!”

  “Just you try disagreeing!” pronounced the active man in tears.

  “Oh the grief I’ve grieved for the Revolution!” said Zhachev, seriously saddened. “Where have you gone, you bitch of bitches? Come here, my dear, so you can receive from a mutilated warrior!”

  Having sensed thought and solitude, not wishing to expend his resources on the State and on the future generation without answer, the activist removed his coat from Nastya; if they were dismissing him, let the masses warm themselves on their own. And he stood, coat in hand, in the middle of the OrgHouse, with nothing further to charm him towards life, all in big flowing tears, and in such doubt of soul that capitalism might, perhaps, yet appear.

  “Why’ve you uncovered the child?” asked Chiklin. “Do you want to chill her?”

  “To hell with your child!” said the activist.

  Zhachev looked at Chiklin and advised him: “Get that bit of iron you brought from the forge!”

  “What do you take me for?” replied Chiklin. “I’ve never in my life touched a man with a dead weapon. That way I wouldn’t get to feel justice!”

  Further, Chiklin calmly gave the activist a manual blow in the chest, so that children could still hope and not freeze. Inside the activist there was a faint crunch of bones and the entire man collapsed onto the floor; Chiklin looked at him with satisfaction, as though he had just contributed something of essential use. The activist’s coat had torn itself from his hands and was now lying separately, not covering anyone.

  “Cover him!” said Chiklin to Zhachev. “Let him be warm now!92”

  Zhachev immediately dressed the activist in the coat that belonged to him and, at the same time, felt the human being: To what extent was he whole?

  “Is he alive?” asked Chiklin.

  “So-so. I’d class him as middling,” replied Zhachev, rejoicing in the entire fact. “But it doesn’t matter, comrade Chiklin. Your hand works like the Party—you yourself are neither here nor there.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t strip the clothes off a feverish child,” said Chiklin with resentment. “He could have brewed up some tea to warm himself.”

  Out in the village a snowy whirlwind had blown up, even though there was no sound of a storm. Zhachev opened the window to check and saw that it was the collective farm, sweeping the snow for the sake of hygiene. The men did not like it now that the snow was spotted with flies—they wanted their winter cleaner.

  Once they had finished in the OrgYard, the members of the collective farm ceased further labor and drooped down beneath the awning in bewilderment of their own further life. Even though people had not eaten for a long time, they were not yet drawn to food, because their stomachs were still crammed with meaty abundance from past days. Taking advantage of the collective farm’s peaceful sorrow, and of the invisibility of the activist committee, the old man from the Dutch-tile factory, along with other unclear elements who had until then been confined in the OrgYard, emerged from back sheds and various sheltered obstacles to life and set off into the distance on vital tasks of their own.

  So as to cherish her better, Chiklin and Zhachev leaned against Nastya from both sides. Having no way out, the little girl’s own warmth made her all dark and submissive, except that her mind went on sadly thinking.

  “I want to go to my mama again!” she pronounced, not opening her eyes.

  “Your mother’s dead,” said Zhachev without joy. “Everybody dies of life. In the end there’s just bones.”

  “I want her bones!” asked Nastya. “But who’s that crying in the collective farm?”

  Chiklin pricked up his ears in readiness; but everything round about was quiet—no one was crying, nor was there any reason to start crying. The day had already reached its middle, high over the district shone a pale sun, and some distant masses or other were moving along the horizon to some unknown inter-settlement meeting—nothing could be making a noise. Chiklin went out onto the porch. A quiet, unconscious groan sounded in the speechless collective farm and was then repeated. The sound began somewhere off to one side and was an appeal to a deaf place, not intended as a complaint.

  “Who is it?” Chiklin shouted from the height of the porch into the entire village, in order that this malcontent should hear him.

  “It’s the hammerer whimpering,” replied the collective farm, lying beneath the awning. “In the night, though, he was growling out songs.”

  There was indeed no one, apart from the bear, who could have been crying then. Probably he had buried his mouth in the ground and was howling sadly into the deaf depth of the soil, unable to think through his grief.

  “It’s the bear,” Chiklin told Nastya as he went back into the room. “He’s anguished about something.”

  “Call him to me, I’m anguished too,” asked Nastya. “Take me to my mama, I feel very hot in here!”

  “Yes, Nastya, we will! Zhachev, crawl along and fetch the bear. There’s nothing for him to work here anyway—there’s no more matter!”

  But Zhachev had no sooner disappeared than he returned back. The bear was himself advancing on the OrgYard, in common with Voshchev; Voshchev was holding him, like a weak person, by an upper paw, while the hammerer moved beside him with a sad stride.

  Entering the OrgHouse, the hammerer sniffed the supine activist and sat down indifferently in a corner.

  “I’ve brought him as a witness that there’s no truth,” pronounced Voshchev. “All he can do is work. The moment he takes a rest, he becomes lost in thought—and then he gets bored and lonely . . . From now on let him exist as an object, as a memory eternal for socialism, a present from me to everyone!”

  “A present for the bastards to come,” agreed Zhachev. “Yes, preserve for them this pitiful product!”

  Bending down, Voshchev began to gather back into his bag the frail and ancient things, essential for future vengeance, that Nastya had taken out from it. Chiklin picked Nastya up in his arms and she opened eyes that had gone silent and that had now dried up like fallen leaves. The little girl was gazing out through the window at the collective-farm peasants—now clinging to one another as they lay low beneath the awning in patient oblivion.

  “Voshchev, are you taking the bear away for utility scrap too?” worried Nastya.

  “Of course I am. I even take care of dust and ashes—but what we have here is a poor living creature.”

  “And them?” Nastya stretched out her weak little arm, now as thin as a sheep’s leg, towards the collective farm lying in the Yard.

  With responsibility, Voshche
v looked into the place of the yard and then turned away, letting his bored head, still longing for truth, droop still lower.

  As before, the activist was motionlessly silent on the floor—until Voshchev, lost in thought, bent down over him and moved him a little, in the feeling of his own curiosity before each and every waning of life. But the activist, lying low or having died, did not reply to Voshchev in any way. Then Voshchev squatted down beside the man and looked for a long time into his blind, hidden face, which had been swept into the depth of its own sad consciousness.

  The bear was silent for a little while but then began whimpering again, and his voice brought the whole collective farm out of the OrgYard and into the House.

  “How, active comrades, are we to live further?” asked the collective farm. “You must all mourn and grieve about us—otherwise there’s no hope for us. Our stock’s in order and our seed’s clean. Now winter’s come and there’s nothing for us to feel. Make an attempt!”

  “There’s no one who can mourn,” said Chiklin. “There lies your chief mourner.”

  The collective farm calmly studied the overturned activist, without feeling pity for him but also without rejoicing, since the activist had always spoken precisely and correctly, fully according to the precepts, only he had been so vile in himself that when the whole of society had once decided to marry him off—in order to diminish his activity—even the least significant-looking of the women and girls had wept from sorrow.