09
To keep from crying, I go into my little cubicle, lie down, and daydream about Vlada Yurevna (prison bunks had gotten me used to this manner of arousal). I masturbate and read Far from Moscow. Suddenly there’s a commotion in the lab outside my door. I jerk off quick into my test tube, and take it with me as I leave my cubicle. Damned if there isn’t an entire fucking delegation standing out there: the Deputy Director, the Party Committee, the Head of Personnel, and a bunch of people who aren’t from biology. They’re reading out an official order to Kimza. The laboratory is to be eliminated. He and Vlada Yurevna are to be fired. The lab assistants will be transferred to being cleaning ladies, and I will be put on trial. Can you fucking believe it? The charges are misrepresentation, absenteeism, and engaging in onanism, not in keeping with the normal duties of a technical consultant. They’re stripping me of the money I got from being registered as a cleaning lady, and they’re freezing my wages until the trial. So there I stand with jizz in hand, and there I remain standing. I twitch my eyelashes, wondering which article they’ll nail me with, and in no time at all, I’ve come up with the answer: Article 109—abuse of official position, section 1. The Deputy Director continues to read out the charges—something about sabotage in the biological sciences, and about how Lysenko has unmasked the saboteurs on grounds of imperialism-Mendelism and Cosmopolitanism.1 I try to sniff out what’s going on. It’s beginning to smell like my own fate is weighing heavily upon me: my fate smells raw, like moist autumn leaves lying on top of a pile of year-old dog shit.
“There he is! Look at him!” says the Deputy Director, poking his finger at me. “Look what kind of helpers our godforsaken scholars have stooped to hire. They so like to present themselves as representatives of pure science! Pure science should be done with clean hands, ladies and gentlemen, Mendelist-Morganists!”
My jaw just drops when I hear this. This is the final fuck-up, I think. Now, on top of my own fate, I can smell the stink of other people’s politics. Right then, I decide to have a deaf-and-dumb fit. I don’t know this Mendel guy. So, when they take me in for the lineup, I’ll say, “This is the first time I’ve seen him, and friends like these I exterminate with Politania, the way I do with crotch-crabs.” As for Morganism, I’ll tell the investigating prosecutor I’ve never set foot in a morgue and never will, so I wouldn’t know who’s fucked the corpses and who hasn’t. Try anything else, but you bastards aren’t going to nail me for Morganism! They hit you with more time for that than for live rape! Don’t ask me why, pal, ask the prosecutor, since you only have one convolution, and it’s in your ass, not your brain, and it’s not even a convolution, just a straight line. Stop interrupting, you shameful lout. Have another snort and listen.
This is when the academician comes running in, screaming: “You are the ones who are the obscurantists!” Then the Deputy Director grabs a crowbar from the boilerman, takes a full swing at the artificial cunt, and smashes it to bits. He says, “No use squandering the people’s finances on such wasteful contraptions!” And he rips the jizz out of my hands, the snake, and tosses it out the window. I conclude from this that he’s no longer the Deputy Director, he’s Director of the whole fucking institute! And I’m right. Kimza suddenly starts to laugh. So does the academician. Vlada Yurevna begins to smile, and the whole premises fills up with a huge crowd of people—up to your prick. The academician roars: “Monkeys! Troglodytes! You should be ashamed of your own genes!”
But the Deputy Director cuts him off: “I beg your pardon. We don’t have those. We have cells, not genes! Do you acknowledge your mistakes?”
Then they composed a welcoming speech for a certain person, subscribed to a state bond, and dragged me off to a meeting of the Academic Council.2 That’s when another sort of fate began for me—they were cleaning the dog shit out from under the autumn leaves. I was digging it out myself with my own hands. But let me tell it from the beginning. First, they sat me down at a conference table and grilled me. They said they’d ask me some questions, and the more truth I told, the better it’d be for me in my position as simple intelligentsia victim of the saboteurs of biology. The Deputy Director began with the question: “What was the relationship between Kimza and Vlada Yurevna Molodina? Did he write her dissertation; and were they ever left alone?”
But I’ve got to tell it in the order it happened, so I’ll act out the whole interrogation:
“Their relationship was scientific. They didn’t get it on in my presence.”
“Is it true that the academician said Lepeshinskaya’s coworkers only pollute the air?”
“I don’t remember. Everyone pollutes the air. Some come right out with it, others do it on the sly.”
“Have you allowed yourself to make insulting analogies with reference to Mamlakat Mamayeva?”
“No, never. I’ve admired her since childhood. I have her portrait.” (I realize immediately that one of the lab assistants has squealed. It has to be Valya—that bitch!).
“Kimza promised you part of the Nobel Prize, didn’t he?”
“No.”
“Who made the gloomy prognosis with regard to the future of our planet?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How did you react to the bombardment of your sperm with protons, neutrons, and electrons?”
“Compassionately.”
“Did Kimza promise to make you the progenitor of a future human race?”
“Why the fuck would I need that?” I yell. “Are you trying to make me out to be the prime suspect here?”
“Don’t curse. We understand that you’ve been victimized. What did the academician say about Stalin’s definition of ‘nation’?”
“In my opinion, all nationalities are fine as long as they don’t give false testimony in court. It doesn’t matter whether they’re kikes or Tatars.”
“Why did you scream repeatedly? Was it painful for you?”
“On the contrary, it was pleasant.”
“Did they ever suggest that you undergo vivisection?”
“No, not once.”
“Do you know what vivisection is?”
“First time I’ve heard of it.”
“What exactly was your … your occupation?”
“My job was to wank off and donate my sperm. I don’t know any more than that. I acted upon the command: ‘Attention—Orgasm!’ Whenever I heard that command, I switched on the skin piston.”
“What was your coworkers’ attitude to Mendel?”
“Exceptionally bad. Nelya even said that during the war, the Mendels gave bribes to the Uzbeks in Tashkent, so the Uzbeks were sent instead of them to some place called Auschwitz. And she said they were lazy. They don’t wage war, but are happy to give themselves up to be killed.”
“Who advocated Morganism?”
At this point, I realize they’ve arrived at the most important part of the interrogation, and I recall what Vlada Yurevna said: “What would happen, Nikolai, if old man Vasya were to sob over every corpse in the morgue?” So I quickly try to cover up, saying, “What’s Morganism?”
“You’re better off not knowing. Who spoke respectfully of the Cosmopolitans?”
“Who are they? That’s the first time I’ve heard of them.”
“They’re degenerates! People for whom borders do not exist.”
Fuck, I think, I’ll have to warn the international thief about this tonight.
“How long was your workday, and how much alcohol did you receive for your work activity?”
Well, I think to myself, it’s time to take extreme measures. Time to fake a fit. So I start to tremble, hold my breath until I turn blue. Then I run to the other end of the table and heave a whole bottle of ink right into the Deputy Director’s mug (the bottle’s shaped like a globe). I fucking heave it, and go straight into my epileptic fit routine. I fall down, growl, and make myself foam at the mouth. I start kicking with my legs and manage to smash the Head of Personnel in the balls. Someone yells: “Pull his tongue out of his mouth or he’ll choke! Shove something metal between his teeth!!”
Then someone shoves a pocket watch between my teeth. I move my jaw, and it stops ticking. I roll my eyes senselessly. My epilepsy was first class, good enough for the Maly Theatre. Idiot that I am, I overdid it and smashed the back of my head against the table leg. Little by little, I quieted down. Next thing I know, they’re holding a meeting in a circle around me about how to keep from airing their dirty laundry in public (giving the West food for propaganda). They call an ambulance.
“This I never expected from my ex-wife,” says the Deputy Director (whose whole mug and shirt are covered with ink), “although I did guess correctly about her affair with Kimza. She’s nothing but a petty pervert. As of today, we are divorced.”
When I heard him say that, I almost jumped right up off the floor—but I managed to restrain myself. Meanwhile (you can call the ambulance when you’re dying and it won’t show up), I thrashed around for a while longer, and then I quieted down, saying: “Water-r-r! Where am I?” For some reason, I’m spitting ink myself, and violet foam is oozing from my lips. I stagger around as if I’m hurting all over. To calm me down, they promise they’ll find work for me, and they get me some water. Then they ask me to write up a statement about Kimza, and to remember whether or not he brought a camera to the experiments (the ambulance never did come). In general, they’re shitting their pants, all on account of me.