An empty mess-hall. Andrei, getting his bowl of porridge and a cup of chocolate, sits close to Sasha, who’s already had his meal and is now waiting impatiently for something.
Andrei: Had your breakfast?
Sasha: Uh-huh.
Andrei: Won’t you go to get your medicine?
Sasha: Later. The boys in the kitchen are making chifir (a strong tea brew used as a mild narcotic).
Andrei: I see.
Nodding at Sasha’s forearm: You’ve got a beautiful rose tattooed on your forearm. So simple and so delicate.
Sasha: Yeah, I had a real artist for a cellmate in Smolensk.
Andrei: You were in Smolensk prison? What for?
Sasha: Burglary.
Andrei: Locked in a psychiatric ward?
Sasha: They did it later. I didn’t quite get along with the administration, you know.
Andrei: Refused to snitch?
Sasha: Yes. So they certified me, and put in a ward, with a gorilla for a male-nurse. He was serving his time there for rape and murder. Honest thieves wouldn’t take this job, you know. So as soon as I got there he tried to use me for his bum-boy. I wasn’t a match for him physically, so I knifed him twice in the throat. The bastard survived by a sheer miracle, and I got me another eight years, this time for attempted murder.
Andrei: How old are you?
Sasha: 27.
Andrei: So am I.
Sasha: 27 and half of my life behind the bars. Do you know how it all started? When I was a kid, I stole a loaf of white bread – a fucking loaf of bread – they feed it to pigs here.
Andrei: Oh, now I see why the nurse here was searching the boys leaving the mess-hall. They are rationing bread. I guess Victor, our philosopher, is right: this regime cares more for pigs than for men; besides, the more convicts they have, the cheaper the labor force.
Sasha: Yes, though sometimes he talks such nonsense!
Voronin approaches the counter with his bowl, shouting: I want more porridge!
Bachkov: What you want is an extra shot of aminazine and a kick in the ass! Lay off, you, glutton.
Voronin (sounding threatening): If you kick me in the ass I won’t even know it. If I kick you in the ass, no one would be able to tell your shit from this porridge.
General laughter.
I’m a tiger, I’m a tiger, living in snow-capped mountains… Just mark my words, you, ha-ha-ha (low rasping sound).
(Then extremely sweet, addressing Andrei): Excuse me, could I have a piece of your bread, please?
Andrei: Sure, help yourself.
Voronin: Thank you, buddy. Know the story about a soldier and general? An orderly brings in a newly washed and pressed tunic to his general and asks him «How come you, comrade general, were so careless yesterday evening?»
Sasha: Get lost, you, bastard, or I’ll cram my spoon into your stupid mouth!
Voronin laughs and walks away, singing: «Among untrodden mountain paths there’s one that’s mine…»
Sasha: God, that pesky loony can really drive me mad.
Andrei: Well, I wouldn’t be so positive about his diagnosis. I passed the forensic psychiatry examination during my first term and saw enough nutty guys who, after they were certified, did the coolest things to make a break.
Bachkov: It doesn’t matter much here whether this zany is really mad or not. He’s shot dosages that no man – sane or crazy – could take. Though, what really puzzles me, boys, is that it doesn’t have any noticeable effect on him. The only visible change in those three months since they brought him here is that he has gained some weight. And he has became more garrulous; his mouth won’t shut for hours.
Andrei: What did they put him in for?
Bachkov: Amnesia. He was brought by a patrol, found wandering in a nearby closed garrison with a Nikon camera in his attaché-case and an expensive illustrated edition of Pushkin. But no identity papers whatever. According to him, he’s called Valeri Voronin, and he used to live in Petropavlovsk.
Andrei: So what’s the problem? No relatives?
Bachkov: The problem is that there are two Petropavlovsks, one is in Kamchatka peninsular, the other is in
Kazakhstan. Judging by his raving accounts, he seems to know both, but when you start asking about his background, his ravings become too kaleidoscopic to figure out anything. Well, in any case the local shrinks diagnosed him as a friendly, non-violent type who could be kept in our asylum. So, we’ve got to put up with this Winnie the Pooh.
Andrei, with a laugh: He looks like a bear, all right. And I suspect has got his strength, too.
Bachkov: Frankly, boys, it’s none of my business who the hell he is. He plays his part and I play mine. I’ve seen enough to mind my own business, and not to nose in somebody else’s.
Departing, to Andrei: Get your dosage after breakfast and you may enjoy yourself in the garden till dinnertime.
Sound of chirping birds.
Out in the yard, Andrei notices a young man stripped to the waist working out with a dumb-bell not far from the porch. He approaches him and asks: Twenty?
Tsvetochkin: What?
Andrei: Twenty kilos?
Tsvetochkin: Yep.
Andrei: Do they allow it?
Tsvetochkin put the dumb-bell on the ground: Of course, not, well, not officially, anyway. The boys brought it so we could exercise on the sly. We hide it in the lilac bushes afterwards. Want to try?
Andrei: Sure.
Tsvetochkin commenting on Andrei’s vigorous jerks: Well, boy, you are in good shape. Unfortunately, I can’t use full force, my ribs are still aching.
Andrei: Why?
Tsvetochkin: Cops broke three of my ribs.
Andrei: Did you get here in the festival sweep too?
Tsvetochkin: No, I had problems with our local police inspector.
Andrei: Where are you from?
Tsvetochkin: Do you know the 37th kilometer commune?
Andrei: Yes.
Tsvetochkin proudly: Have you ever heard the name of Tsvetochkin?
Andrei: Harry Tsvetochkin?
Tsvetochkin: Yes.
Andrei: Never heard it, but I did see it. This name is sprayed in large letters on a wall of a shed near the railroad. Whenever I go by in a commuter train I see: Harry Tsvetochkin. Did you spray it?
Tsvetochkin: No. Boys did it. You see we used to work out there with the dumb-bells. As I proved to be the local strongman, the boys sprayed my name in red letters on the wall.
Andrei: And what was the problem with your local inspector?
Tsvetochkin: Well, his daughter began frequenting our shed.
Andrei with a laugh: Got interested in the sport too?
Tsvetochkin: Yes, if you call sex a sport. Her daddy tried to disband us a couple of times, and threatened to tear off my head and everything beneath. I told him to bugger off because no one was dragging his precious babe there by force. Well, a week later they picked me up at my work place, put in a car and drove to the police department for what they call «questioning».
Somebody had stolen the wheels off somebody’s car, so they said it was me, and punched me in the teeth to facilitate, as they put it, a «Gorbachev’s consensus» – to make me confess, I mean. I countered the bastard who hit me with my right, in the teeth too. He went down like a log, hitting the keys with the back of his head, they had the keys stuck in their safe. Well, in short, he got his head fractured and the whole mob went mad and started punching and kicking me, breaking three of my ribs, then they threw me in solitary where I developed lung edema, and the pleura became detached from the beating.
Well, they got scared I would die on their hands, so they offered me money: Take it, they said, and keep your mouth shut, or else; we’ll take you to a hospital as a mugging victim we picked up in the street.
Andrei: So what did you do?
Tsvetochkin: Refused, of course. I won’t look at this scum, much less make deals with them. Too bad I didn’t kill that bastard.
Andrei: Well, I’m afraid you’re too harsh on them. They didn’t cheat you with the hospital, anyway. They mistook emergency for psychiatry, though; but you can’t expect police to know who treats heads and who treats, say, asses.
Tsvetochkin smiles: How can they, indeed, if you can’t tell their heads from their asses?
Andrei: How did you survive, incidentally? Lung edema is a serious thing. Did they treat you here?
Tsvetochkin: They did, with aminazine, just like everyone here. I survived because I heal easily like a dog.
Andrei: I see; I’m pretty much a survivor too. Where shall I put this dumb-bell?
Tsvetochkin: Over there, in the bushes behind the bench. Would you like to play chess or dominos?
Andrei: Naah, any brain use is strictly proscribed for me by the authorities. I’d much rather sun-bathe in the bushes.
Tsvetochkin: OK, then.
Andrei, approaching a bench among lilac bushes on which Victor Vasilyevich, stripped to the waist, is sunbathing: May I?
Victor: Sure, enjoy yourself, if labor therapy is not for you.
Andrei: I’m not inclined to work for the communists, besides they won’t risk letting me out. Frankly, I’m surprised they let me out in the garden.
Victor: They let everyone out in the garden here. Unless you are strapped to your bunk, of course.
Andrei: Well, that’s a comfort. By the way, I’ve thought of your new and the Hegelian old dialectics. How do they exactly differ? You’ve said you just added maxims there…
Victor: Caught a philosophic fever in the nuthouse?
Andrei: No, I was just wondering: If you really created a universal methodology, it would actually mean a revolution of our minds, because methodology is a kind of a universal key used for deciphering, the key which could change our whole outlook. Isn’t that so?
Victor: Yes, though I’d compare it to a grammar, a syntax: If you do not know its rules, you won’t understand the language, even if you know the meaning of every word. That’s one thing; the other is that, more importantly, having changed our world outlook, this methodology will change out attitude toward the world.
As for differences, it differs from the old one not so much by a greater number of new notions and maxims as by a newer and more detailed interpretation of the old ones, ranging from conditionality and relativity of all notions and maxims, like: the unity and struggle of the opposites; a shift of quantity into quality and negation of negation – all this may be true under certain conditions with certain points of reference, and not true in others.
The old dialectics has none of this, nor has it a universal measure for various processes and phenomena.
Andrei: Wait a minute, how can there be a universal measure in this extremely diverse material world?
Victor: There can be and is! We are simply attracted and confused by the superficial visible diversity of the world, the variety of its forms. Prying into its content, its essence, is boring and unattractive. Nonetheless, this world has one feature in common which serves both as a reference point and a universal measure: it’s
Time.
Andrei: Time?
Victor: Sure. As you know, everything in this world changes, everything flows. Therefore, the only universal measure there can possibly be is Time.
The fact that the old dialectics explain the developments and processes by the struggle of opposites which have a common root; the fact that this struggle is perceived, first, as a quantitative change, growth, then as a qualitative shift; that during this struggle a negation of negation takes place, and contradictions are eliminated – all this shows that we are dealing not with a methodology, but a universal description, because there is no universal measure in it.
Appropriately, the practical value of such description is rather limited, actually close to nil. Because the world description is nothing but a sketch, a diagram, whereas methodology is a map which has its scale, points of reference, or cardinal points, and its set of signs.
With such a map in your hand, you can find your position in space by aligning the cardinal points and finding a match between the signs on the map and the actual objects in the field. The ability to take measurements means that you can answer the crucial questions: not just what direction do we go in, but where exactly do we go? What do we have yet to pass, and when? What obstacles do we have to overcome, and how long will it take us? No draft, no universal description, would answer those questions.
Andrei: Well, I understand your analogy. But it applies to space, it’s hard to comprehend how Time can be the universal measure in such a case.
Victor: Don’t we measure cosmic space by light years?
Andrei: Well, that’s the Cosmos…
Victor: Don’t we measure the distance to a nearby bus-stop or a kiosk by how many minutes it takes us to walk there?
Andrei: Sure, but we imply an average distance that we cover in a minute. Besides, one can compare only things of the same quality. Space and Time are totally different entities which, as far as I know, have not even been precisely defined.
Victor: Quite right! It’s this absence of precise definition, or rather understanding of the nature of these things which in our minds makes them qualitatively different, incomparable. But these differences are relative…
As I’ve already said, the character of one’s perception depends on the speed, frequency of perception. Depending on its speed, the picture of the perceived thing can range from chaotic to dynamic or static.
If our perception of a thing or a process produces a picture of chaos, it means that in the multitude of the picture’s elements our mind failed to find anything familiar, repetitive.
If our mind begins to single out and recognize as recurring these or those periodically appearing and disappearing elements, a dynamic picture will emerge. A stable periodicity of such repetitions is generally considered as Time.
Naturally, this stable repetitive element must be vital to the observer. I mean whatever gadgets we might invent to measure time: mechanical, electronic, or atomic clocks – the Sun and the Moon will remain as the defining measure of all our life cycles.
If we are to give a brief scientific definition, then Time is a result of a juxtaposition of two frequencies, with the received fraction being periodical.
Andrei: What, again frequencies-amplitudes, again physics?
Victor: Yes, what I’ve done, in effect, is pure physics, where Space and Time are simply ways of arranging, interpreting information, a set of stereotypes.
Andrei: Isn’t your work yet another stereotype?
Victor: It is, but more precise, detailed and therefore of greater practical value.
Andrei: It’s funny to discuss the stereotype of Time in the institution where even possession of instruments for measuring it is strictly prohibited.
Victor: You mean watches?
Andrei: Well, maybe not just them. I guess I mean there must be some missing link in your logical chain, or to put it plainly, you must have gone astray somewhere somehow. Anyway that’s the conclusion all my knowledge and personal experience would rather lead to, unless my knowledge and personal experience are patently insufficient to understand your point. If I follow your logic correctly, the pattern, the path of our development is not determined by the resulting sum of internal and external forces, but by Time?
Victor: Quite right. It’s Time which determines these things, both the array of forces, and the pattern, the path of development of both animate and inanimate worlds. As for your reservation that my statements contradict your knowledge and experience, I’m afraid one has to conclude that you, my friend, have not yet acquired even the humblest of knowledge and experience which Ecclesiastes used to have, to observe that everything happens in its good time; that there’s time for birth and time for death, time for killing and time for healing.
Andrei: Time for sorrow and time for joy. Yes, that was a clever move to put me down, considering that
Ecclesiastes is the only author in the Old Testament I have any regard for. But, to tell you the truth, I’ve always regarded him as a great lyricist and viewed this passage as lyrics, not as physics. You seem to have a physicist’s point of view on everything, resorting here and there to physical terms, did you study physics?
Victor: On the contrary, the education I received two decades ago graduating from a conservatory is rather of a lyrics than a physics nature. Until my enlightenment I used to be a musician and played with the
Moscow philharmonic orchestra.
Andrei: Why did you quit? A musician in a philharmonic orchestra is an excellent job.
Victor: Because «no one lights a lamp and puts in under a bushel; instead he puts it on the lampstand, where it gives light for everyone in the house.»
Well, concerning my choice of physical terms, I must stress that if you seek to explain something, you should choose the language which can offer us its most succinct description. And physics can offer us the most precise picture of our present-day reality. Of course, this language should be comprehensible to the audience you address. But you seem familiar with physics’ basics?
Andrei: Yes, quite. I simply cannot understand how a musician…
Victor: could grasp the language of physics? It’s the result of lengthy practice of yoga, of work with one’s own body and mind. You see, neither our body nor mind differs in any way from the rest of physical instruments, except that they are more complex. It’s only natural that I in my work come to the same conclusions which physics make, that’s why I use their language.
Andrei: Funny thing: yoga has always been regarded as an idealistic, religious teaching, while you are proving to be a rabid physical materialist.
Victor: I’m neither. Idealism – materialism are simply points of view, instruments, say, kind of glasses we use to look at the world, some glasses we select are good for reading newspapers; others are good for watching TV. Religion starts where knowledge in its impotence gives way to faith, reason to morals and ethics; the borderline between them is always relative and conditional.
Bachkov, approaching: Sunbathing?
Andrei: What else is there to do? I guess we’ll have to spend the rest of the holiday season here.
Bachkov: Well, it’s not up to me to decide who or what time is spent here, but I’m sure they won’t release you until the festival ends and its foreign guests leave the country.
Dandelion, an old man about 80, addressing Bachkov: Anatoli Sergeevich, could you please give me the keys. I want to weed this flowerbed with dahlias, time permitting.
Andrei: Time is no problem here.
Dandelion looks peevishly at Andrei, without saying anything.
Bachkov: Here they are, Evgeniy Pavlovich. Watch out for the sun: they say it will be hot today.
Andrei: How did this Dandelion come to be here?
Bachkov, taking a seat: His sisters handed him over. He has two sisters in Moscow, and he lived with them…
Andrei: Is he single?
Bachkov: He is.
Andrei: Well, what’s the story?
Bachkov: The story is the usual one: either he got on their nerves, or their children wanted more living space…
Andrei: Well, he seems mentally quite sound.
Bachkov: You’d better ask Miroshkin, the late head of the hospital.
Andrei: Which Miroshkin? Do you mean Professor Miroshkin?
Bachkov: Yes, professor Miroshkin, our former head of the hospital. Did you know him?
Andrei: I surely did. He was my forensic expert, diagnosed me as schizophrenic and certified me as non compos mentis, in short, signed and sealed everything the KGB used to frame me.
Bachkov: Well, it was either him or somebody else: you wouldn’t have avoided it anyway.
Andrei: Maybe. I’ll only say that prior to Miroshkin they took me to Serbskiy Institute and asked their academician to diagnose and certify me. And he refused…
So, you say the old bastard has kicked the bucket?
Bachkov: He died four years ago.
Andrei: And what did he send the Old Dandelion here for?
Bachkov: I don’t know. Maybe for a bribe, or maybe he just did a favor. Anyway, during his term the
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