Outer Space, the Nervous System and a Slab of Fatback
Old Naum Yevstigneich had a terrible hangover. He was lying on the stove-bed, groaning.
Regularly, once a month, when he drew his pension, Yevstigneich used to get drunk, after which he would be laid up for three days at a stretch. 'They're kicking me with their hooves, all the devils in hell are kicking me. I'm giving up the ghost..."
Fifteen-year-old Yurka, his lodger, was sitting at the table with books spread all over it, doing his homework.
"I'm giving up the ghost, Yurka..."
"You shouldn't have drunk so much."
"You're too young to talk like that."
A pause. Yurka's pen went on scratching.
But the old man wanted to talk-it gave him some relief.
"What else am I to do if I don't drink! Must do something to mark the month."
"Why?"
"I'm a human being, ain't I?"
"Hm... You talk as if you were living in the time of serfdom," Yurca leaned back on his bent-wood chair and eyed his landlord scornfully. "In those days they used to believe that everyone ought to drink."
"How do you know what it was like in those days?" The old man looked down from above with a grimace of pain and curiosity. Yurka sometimes surprised him with his knowledge and, though he never gave in, he liked listening to the tad. "How d'you know? You're only a stripling."
"We've been through that period."
"Your teachers told you about it, did they?"
"Yes, they did."
"How do they know? There's not an old man among 'em."
"From books."
"From books... They don't happen to know why a man's sick on the morning after, do they?"
"Intoxication of the organism by fusel oil."
"0il?l In vodka?"
"Yes."
Yevstigneich felt very ill, but he couldn't help uttering a croaky laugh.
'That's where study gets you."
"D'you want me to show you the formula? I'll prove it to you in black and white right now..." Yurka picked up a chemistry textbook, but the old man gave a groan and clutched his head.
"Oo-oh!.. It's coming over me again! Now I'm done for..."
'Take a hair of the dog that bit you then! Why suffer like this?"
The old man made no response to this suggestion. He could have done with another drink to sober up with, but he grudged the money. On the whole, he was a stingy old blighter. He lived well enough, drew a decent pension and his sons and daughter in town helped him out. His cellar was stocked with all kinds of provisions-fatback that he had salted down the year before, pickled cucumbers, cabbage, water melons, mushrooms... It was like a regular food store with its vats, tubs, baskets and barrels. In his larder he had a sack and a half of good flour and a leg of ham weighing about fifty pounds. In his vegetable garden there was a potato clamp, last year's but still not used up, from which he was feeding his pigs, ducks and chickens. When he wasn't ill, he would be up before dawn and pottering about his plot till dark. Often he would go down into the cellar, sit on the bottom step and ponder. "Dratted devils! Why couldn't they live here!" he would mutter to himself as he climbed back into the daylight. This remark referred to his sons and daughter. He hated them for having left him and gone to live in town.
With Yurka it was different. His home was in the next village, where there was no ten-year school. He had no father. His mother had three other children besides himself to look after. His father had been drowned while rafting timber. The three other children were all younger than Yurka. His mother worked day and night, she was so keen on Yurka finishing his ten years at school. So was Yurka.
In fact, he dreamed of going to college. To become a surgeon.
The old man, however, seemed not to notice Yurka's poverty and charged him five rubles a month. They did their cooking separately, each for himself. Sometimes, towards the end of the month Yurka would run out of provisions. The old man would cast many a sidelong glance at the boy eating his dry bread, before he asked, "Run short, have you?"
"Uh-huh."
"I'll let you have something and you can make it up after."
"All right."
The old man would weigh out a couple of kilograms of millet and Yurka would make himself some gruel.
Of a morning they would stand at the stove, chatting.
"Still want to finish your studies, do you?"
"Yes, I do. I'm going to be a surgeon."
"How much longer will that take?"
"Eight years. Medical school takes six years, not five, like the others."
"You'll peg out before you get to be a surgeon, I reckon. How's your mother going to find the money?"
"I'll get a grant. Other boys do it... There are two from our village going through college on their grants."
The old man would stare into the fire, evidently remembering his own children.
"What's the mighty attraction of town?"
"Education ... that's the attraction. When you're a surgeon you can go back to the country and work. Personally, I'd rather work in the country."
"Do they earn such a mighty lot at it then?"
"Who? Surgeons?"
"Aye."
"Certainly not. They get very little, less than anyone. They had an increase recently, I know. But still..."
"Then what's the sense in straining your guts out for so many years? Go and train as a lorry driver, then get a job. Look how much they earn! And then there's what they make on the quiet, delivering wood to someone and state-farm hay to someone else. You'd be a help to your mother then. She's got three others on her hands, you know."
Yurka would be stock for a reply to that. The mention of his mother and younger brothers hurt. Of course, it was hard for mother... But this talk only made him all the more resentful of the old man.
"We'll manage," he would say curtly. 'That's no one else's business."
"Stands to reason," the old man assented. 'They've got you all mixed up with this here studying, set you all a-wandering, like..." He failed to find a suitable comparison. "We used to live all right before without any study-by God's grace. We never went hungry."
'That's all you can think of-what it was like before!"
"And why not?.. Now they've made all them aero-planes-the filthy things."
"You'd rather go by cart or lie on your stove-bed, I suppose?"
"What's so bad about that? If I go by cart at least I know I'll get there in my own good time. But if you have a crash in one o'them aeroplanes, there's no picking up the pieces afterwards."
And so they carried on every morning, until Yurka went off to school. The old man had to unburden himself to face the long day of silence; Yurka, on the other hand, though irritated by the old man's tiresome grumbling, derived some satisfaction from defending the New-the aeroplanes, education, town life, books, the cinema...
Strangely enough, the old man did not believe in God either.
'They've nothing better to do, them whimperers, so all they do is wail," he would say about religious folk.
"Work-that's the only answer. Then there'll be peace and plenty."
But by working he meant only for yourself, on your own bit of land, your own vegetable plot. Like in the old days. He had stopped working for the collective farm long ago, though some of the old men of his age were still doing their bit-looking after the hives, keeping an eye on the crops, or doing a job as watchmen.
"You've got a kulak mentality," Yurka told the old man one day when he was cross with him.
The old man held his peace when he heard that. Then he said in a strange manner, "Arise, ye cursed by the earth!"
And cleared his nostrils noisily, by blowing first through one, then the other. Then he wiped his nose with the hem of his shirt and concluded, "You'd have made a good commissar, you would. They used to be young 'uns, the commissars, in those days."
Yurka felt flattered.
"Cursed of the earth, not by..." he corrected the old man.
"Don't come out with that one, about the kulak deviation, or they'll be chopping a chunk off my allotment. I've got a whole strip more than what I'm entitled to."
"You can keep it, for all I care."
"It's gone off a bit now," the old man said after a while.
"Everything went dark before my eyes."
Yurka didn't want to talk any more. He had his homework to do.
"What are you learning about now?"
"Astronomy," Yurka replied curtly, implying that he had no desire for conversation.
"What's that about?"
"Outer space. Where our cosmonauts fly to."
"Gagarin, eh?"
"Not only Gagarin. There are a lot of them now."
"Why do they fly there? What for?"
'That's a fine question!" Yurka again leaned back on his chair. "You certainly ask them! Think they'd be better off lying on top of a stove, do you?"
"Stove! Stove! You're always poking that at me!" the old man burst out offendedly. "Live as long as I have, then you can talk."
"I didn't say it to offend you. But fancy asking why people are pioneering outer space! That really is..."
"Well, explain it to me then. What do they teach you for? So that you can bite an old man's head off?"
"Well, in the first place, space exploration is a necessity. There'11 come a time when people will land on the Moon. And later on they'll fly to Venus. And on Venus there may be other people living there. Won't it be interesting to have a look at them?"
"Are they like us?"
'That t can't say for sure. They may be a bit uglier because the atmosphere there is different-more pressure."
'They'll be wanting to fight us, I expect."
"Why should they?"
"What are you here for, they'll say." The old man's interest was awakened. "An uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar, as the saying goes."
'They won't do anything of the kind. They'll be as glad as we are. No one knows yet who's more intelligent-perhaps they are. Then we'll be able to learn from them. And when we've developed our technology, we can fly further on..."
Yurka himself was captivated by the prospects unfolding before mankind. He jumped up and started pacing about the room. "We don't yet know how many planets
there are that resemble our Earth! There may be millions! And living, thinking creatures on all of them. We'll fly to and fro to see each other... And in the end there'll be a-a universal mankind. We'll all be the same."
"Going to marry each other, are you?"
"I'm talking about education! Somewhere perhaps there are beings that are so developed we can all learn from them. Perhaps they've discovered everything already and we're only taking the very first steps. Then we shall be able to live in that state of bliss that religion calls paradise. Suppose you want to see your sons from just where you are now, up there on the stove. Go ahead, switch on the video set, tune in to the right wave and here they are, talk as much as you like. Or perhaps you want to pay a visit to your daughter, nurse your little grandson for a bit? Up you go onto the roof, start a small helicopter and in x minutes you'll be at your daughter's house. And your grandson... How old's your grandson now?"
"Seven."
"He'll read to you aloud from War and Peace because his development will be much faster than it is today. And medicine will make such progress that people will live to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty."
"Now that's laying it on a bit too thick."
"Why?! Scientists are working on that very problem today. A hundred and twenty is considered the normal lifespan. We haven't got sufficient data as yet, but we'll borrow it from our neighbors in the Galaxy."
"Can't you manage it yourselves, so that we'll all live to be a hundred and twenty?"
"No, that we can't manage yet. It's a slow process. Perhaps we'll get to the stage when we'll live to be a hundred and twenty, but not in the near future. It'll be quicker to build a spaceship to fly to a Galaxy where that problem may have been solved already. They may have discovered some medicine..."
"You wouldn't want to live a hundred and twenty years anyway. You'd get tired of it."
" You might not, but others will be glad to. There'll be a special medicine..."
"You and your 'medicine' ... you might at least discover a medicine to take off a hangover. My head-it feels like an emptied still."
"You shouldn't drink."
"Go to..."
They fell silent.
Yurka sat down to his books again.
'This will be, that will be-that's all you can talk about," the old man began again. "Like talking big, you do. You, for instance, are going to study for sixteen years, but what'll you do for a man when he's about to die?"
"Cut something out of him."
"What's the use of that if his time's up?"
"I don't answer such ... ignorant questions."
"You've got no answer-that's why."
"No answer?.. What about all these people!" Yurka scooped up an armful of books and pointed to them.
"Haven't they any answer? Have you ever read even one of them?"
'There's nothing to read in 'em-just a pack of lies."
"Very well!" Yurka jumped up and started pacing the room again. 'There used to be a disease called plague, didn't there?"
"Cholera?"
'That's right, cholera."
"Used to be. Back in 'twenty..."
"Where is it now? Is there any about?"
"Lord forbid! It might come back..."
'That's just the point-it won't. We've learnt how to combat it. Take another example. Suppose you were bitten by a mad dog, what would happen to you?"
"I'd get rabies."
"Yes, and you would have died. But now you get forty injections and it's all over. You're safe. Tuberculosis was considered incurable, wasn't it? But now? Six months' treatment and a man's right as rain! Who thought of all this? Scientists! 'Lies'... You ought to keep quiet if you can't understand."
Yurka's attack put the old man on his mettle.
"All right. I'll let you have it about the dog. But what about snake-bite? What could the doctors do about that? But the old leech-woman, she'd come and whisper a charm and it'd pass off in no time. And she never studied at no colleges."
"It wasn't a fatal bite, that's all."
"Go and try it. Just let a snake take a nip at you..."
"By all means! I'll have an injection beforehand and it can bite me for all it's worth-I'll only smile."
"A swelled head, that's what you've got!"
"But here they are!" Yurka pointed at the books again. "People tried these things out on themselves! Do you know that when Academician Pavlov was dying he called in his students and started dictating to them a description of every stage in his own death."
"How could he?"
"Like this. 'My feet are going cold,' he says, 'make a note of that.' So they put that down. Then he lost all sensation in his hands. So he tells them. 'My hands have gone numb.'
"And they were writing it all down?"
"Yes. Then his heart began to fail and he told them to note that. They were crying their eyes out, of course, but they wrote it down." Yurka felt his own eyes beginning to smart with tears. The story made a deep impression on the old man too.
"What then?"
'Then he died. But he told them everything right up to the last moment, because it was needed for science. And you with your leech-women would leave us in ignorance for another thousand years... This used to be, that used to be!..' Did you have this in the old days?!" Yurka went over to the wall and plugged in the radio. A woman was ringing. "Where is she? She's not here, is she?"
"Who isn't?"
'The woman that's singing."
"But that comes over the wires."
"Not wires but radio waves! Wires! The wires are only here in the village. But she may be singing somewhere hundreds of miles away-do you think the wires stretch all that way?"
"Could be. Last year, when I went to see Vanka, there is wires hanging from poles all the way."
Yurka decided to drop the argument.
"It's no use talking to you. I 've got my homework to do. "
"Get on with it then."
"But you keep distracting me..." Yurka sat down at the table, put his hands over his ears and started reading.
For a long time there was no sound in the cottage.
"Is there a picture of him?" the old man asked at last.
"Who?"
'That scientist, the one who was dying."
"Academician Pavlov? Here he is."
Yurka handed the old man a book, pointing out the photograph of Pavlov. The old man studied it seriously and at great length.
"He was an old fellow by then."
"He was hale and hearty right up to old age, and never got drunk like ... some people." Yurka took the book back.
"And he didn't lie in bed over a stove, cursing and swearing. He used to play gorodki right up to the last day when he was taken ill. And the number of dogs he operated on to show their reflexes!.. It's thanks to him we know about the nervous system. Why are you sick now?"
"Because of my hangover. I know that without Pavlov telling me."
"Yes, it's a hangover all right, but yesterday you crushed your nervous system, damped it down, and today it's...straightening up. You've developed a conditioned reflex. As soon as you draw your pension you must have a bottle of vodka. You can't do without it." Yurka almost enjoyed proving to the old man so calmly and convincingly how much harm his drinking was doing to him. The old man listened. "So what must you do? You must overcome this reflex. You draw your pension at the post-office. You set off for home, but your feet take you in the direction of the village shop. So what you must do is walk straight past it. Or go by another street altogether."
"I'll only feel worse."
"You'll feel worse once, twice, three times. Then you'll get used to it. You'll walk calmly past the village shop and laugh at the idea of going in."
The old man raised himself on his elbow and with trembling fingers rolled a cigarette and lit it. He took one drag and began to cough.
"Oh, damn and blast it... Ach!.. Turns me inside out, it does. Well, I'll be damned!"
Yurka sat down to his books again.
The old man climbed wheezily down from the stove-bed, put on his boots and sheepskin, picked up a knife and went out into the covered porch. Where's he off to now, Yurka wondered. The old man was gone for a long time. Yurka was about to go and see what had become of him going out like that, with a knife. But at that moment he reappeared, carrying a slab of fatback as big as his hand.
"Got any bread?" he asked sternly.
"Yes. Why?"
"Here you are then. Have some fat on it, or you'll work yourself to a frazzle with them academicians of yours-before you've studied 'em all."
Yurka didn't know what to say.
"I won't be able to pay you back. We haven't got any..."
"Eat up, lad. There's a teapot on the stove. It's still hot, I reckon... Make a proper meal of it."
Yurka fetched the teapot from the stove, poured himself a mug of still warm tea, cut the bread and fatback into slices and started eating. The old man climbed back on to the stove-bed above the stove with some difficulty and looked down from there at Yurka.
"How's the fatback?"
"Very good!" Yurka said in English. "First rate!"
"You have to know how to feed a pig. Some people are daft and start feeding it up in autumn. Then there's nothing but fat, no meat at all. And with some it's the other way round-they starve the animal because they think it'll be more lean. Not everyone likes fat, you see. Then when they kill the beast, there's neither fat, nor lean. But what you have to do is feed it up for a week, then go easy for a bit, on half rations, then feed it up for another week, then go easy again... Then you'll get it in layers-a layer of fat, a layer of lean. And it takes skill to do the salting..."
Yurka listened and tucked into the chilled, appetising bacon fat, which really was tasty.
'This is fine. Thanks a lot."
"Full up?"
"Uh-huh." Yurka cleared away the bread and the teapot. There was still some fat left. "Where do I put this?"
'Take it out into the porch and leave it on the tub.
You can have some more in the evening."
Yurka took the fatback into the porch, returned, patted his tummy and said cheerfully, "Now I'll be able to think better. Sitting all the time like this makes your head swim a bit."
'That's right," the old man said contentedly, stretching out again on his back. "O-oh! Blast it all!.. It all comes back at you as soon as you lie down. "
"Shall I run and buy you a half bottle?" Yurka offered.
The old man said nothing for a while.
"It'll go off. Later on you can throw the chickens a bit of corn and a fork or two of hay for the cow. Only don't forget to shut the gate after you."
"All right. Now what have we got left? Geography. We'll be through that in two ticks." Yurka was in high spirits. He had made a good meal, his homework was almost finished; he would be able to go skiing this evening.
"What about his own kith and kin? Didn't he have any?" the old man asked all of a sudden.
"Who?"
'That Academician. Was there only students there?"
"Pavlov, you mean? There may have been relatives too. I don't know for sure. I'll ask at school tomorrow."
"He'd have had some children, wouldn't he?"
"Probably, I'll find out tomorrow."
"He must have had. He couldn't have dictated much without his own folk round him. It's hard being alone."
Yurka decided not to argue. He could have said, what about the students! But he left it at that.
"Of course," he agreed. "It's hard being alone."
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