Andrei Shkarubo - Untrodden paths

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

Dandelion received sanatorium-like treatment, and had free to access to Miroshkin. The present head of the hospital treats him well too. After all, he’s harmless, poses no problem to us, and he likes flowers. This garden is the result of his work here: those gorgeous flowerbeds under the windows, and these lilac bushes. Incidentally, I put my nose into his case file just to find out something about his background. Well, in his early twenties he graduated from Moscow University, after which there’s not a single record of his work, or anything.

Andrei : Oh, so the Old Dandelion is a veteran loafer? Why didn’t they try him for parasitism? The first frame they tried to put on me when the authorities decided to put me away was a little charge of parasitism.

Bachkov : I don’t know. He doesn’t have any criminal record either. Just no record of anything which could tell what his life was. Of course, it’s not as if it were my business. But, it’s curious.

Andrei : Yeah, if this regime survives after all, my prospects seem as bleak as those of old Dandelion: either take up arms, or live and die outlawed, behind barbed wire.

Bachkov : What’s wrong with barbed wire? As far as I know, you’ve been living in your Star City behind barbed wire all your life, without any objections.

Andrei : How do you know? Did you read it in my case files?

Bachkov : I was taken on a guided tour to your Cosmonaut’s Training Center. I used to be on the all-Russia boxing team, and as a champion was given a chance to see how you live there. I must say lots of people would envy the life behind barbed wire you have!

Andrei : Oh, really? So what did you find so tempting there? Sausage or foreign-made garb in our shops?

Bachkov : Well, if so, what’s wrong with it?

Andrei : Good question. I hope you, as a sportsman, should know that no one gets such things free: some pay for them with their health, some with their lives, and there are some who would readily sell their souls for those comforts. When our commanding fathers decided to lock me up, and ordered criminal charges brought against me, the investigator from our special prosecutor’s office, a rare species of a bastard, told me frankly: «You know I don’t have anything personal against you, but you see, I, too, have health problems. I have gastritis and I need a special dietary country cheese, which I can buy only in Star City, you understand?» I told him sympathetically that oatmeal boiled in water is quite good for the stomach, and he said «Ok, wise guy, I’ll see that you have plenty of it, and for a long time».

Bachkov : I’d rather move under the shed and play dominoes with the boys, it’s getting too hot here.

Exits.

Andrei, grinning : I guess it’s the topic which got too hot for him.

Victor : He’s the most decent male-nurse we have here. He studies at a medical college, incidentally. There are also two drunkards from the nearby alcoholic ward; as for the third one, I have no idea who he is, but he has the manners of a criminal, and he associates with Sasha’s sort.

Andrei : To tell you the truth, of the three types you’ve mentioned it’s the «decent» type I trust least. When I got in a psychiatric hospital for the first time and they certified me as non compos mentis, I went on a hunger-strike, demanding a court trial. On its seventh day, the hospital administration ordered me force-fed. And there were two male-nurses on duty that day: a «decent» one, as you say, incidentally, a college student too, and the other, an ex-convict, with two prison terms for burglary. And it was this guy who refused to take part in my force-feeding. So they asked for volunteers among the patients – about two thirds of our ward were criminals, brought either for forensic examination or transferred from psychiatric prisons. Well, none of them volunteered. The two who did came from a «decent» background. So your thesis that morals and ethics begin when scheming ends, I can confirm by my own past experience.

Victor : Well, what I said was that the human mind cannot foresee all the consequences of human acts, which is why it resorts to such safety rules as morals and ethics. But taking into account that the human mind, as it becomes increasingly ego-centered, quickly turns to scheming, rather than reasoning, I think your way of putting it is quite correct. Moreover, it may be painful for you to hear, but your interpretation is close to

Lenin’s. He, too, was rather skeptical of the intellectuals’ worth, remarking that they are not the nation’s brain, but rather its bran, or excrement.

Andrei : I don’t know what he said on that score. Anyway I’m not going to replace Christ’s commandments with class morals, the way he and his gang did.

Victor : Never say «never», because to some extent he was right on that score too. Of course, the morals of a social class are a poor substitute for Christ’s commandments, or rather the moral-ethical norms of the

Cosmos…

Andrei : So, why was Lenin right, then?

Victor : He was right to a point because the degree of human receptiveness to Christ’s commandments, incidentally, based on love – that is, the capability of compassion and sacrifice – this receptiveness, indeed, depends on class consciousness: the more oppressed it is, the greater its capacity for compassion and sacrifice. It’s not so much our being, as our beatings, which determine our consciousness. Christ himself stressed that idea, remarking that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Andrei: It’s no use arguing with you.

Victor : Why not? It’s in dispute that truth is discovered. Though our cellmates with criminal records, like

Sasha, would say that «He who argues isn’t worth shit».

Andrei : I’m afraid they are more correct under the present conditions.

Victor smiling : I see you are already learning the principle of relativity and condition. Incidentally, if I got you right, you live in Star City?

Andrei : Yes.

Victor : And what did they try to prosecute you for?

Andrei : Easy question which is hard to answer. You see when the KGB tries to frame you, the formal charges they bring against you quite often have nothing to do with the actual cause for which you are being prosecuted. In my case the actual reason was so foul that they even were not unanimous on their formal charges and tried everything that might stick, from low parasitism to high treason, but finally decided on evasion of military service.

Victor : I see. A Russian continuation of Yaroslav Gashek’s story of the brave soldier Sweik: a spy, a lunatic and a deserter all rolled into one.

Andrei : Yes, sir.

Victor : So what did you do to them that they have such a grudge against you?

Andrei : Nothing. And that’s the grudge. As I said it’s a long story which started 15—17 years back when they began pressing me to snitch on my schoolmates, and my mother to inform on the cosmonauts, because, as they put, «some of them allowed themselves too much».

We refused – and were subjected to rabid harassment, which is easy in a closed garrison. In short, I was vaccinated against TB, although this vaccination was strictly proscribed to me on health grounds, and against which mother repeatedly warned the doctors. After their vaccination I developed problems with my lungs.

Victor : And they did their best to conceal its cause, leaving you without a diagnosis, but offering treatment in exchange for cooperation, right?

Andrei : Yes, that’s about how it actually was. How do you know?

Victor : It’s an old, sure way of recruitment. They use it mostly in the labor camps, though. So, what happened next?

Andrei : The next ten years my mother spent trying to get to the truth, in endless appeals to numerous authorities, from the bottom level to the top – all in vain: no diagnosis – no treatment. So I was forced to take up herbal medicine and yoga.

Victor : Did they help you cure the TB?

Andrei : No, they didn’t. But they helped me not to die from it; at least, not immediately. Well, after I finished school, I entered a college and was to study applied mathematics, but after six months I had to drop out for health reasons.

After which they were legally bound to draft me. I thought it was my chance to make them diagnose me, so I lodged an appeal with the head of the draft office, demanding judicial inquiry into my case, as well as a medical forensic examination; after which the draft office, apparently under pressure from our top brass and special department, ignored the problem of my draft for five years in the hope that the problem would disappear of natural causes. But it didn’t. Then in 1981 they summoned me to our special prosecutor’s office, and the prosecutor gave me an ultimatum: either I enlist in the army, and receive the necessary treatment there, or they prosecute me for parasitism. I said Ok, if forensic medical experts were to find me healthy, I’d go to prison.

Victor : It’s strange: Knowing how these thugs hate legal scandals and disclosures, it would have been easier for them to kill you rather then start criminal procedures.

Andrei : I suspect that’s exactly what they tried to do. A couple of days after my summons to the prosecutor’s office, in the early afternoon hours, when I was at home alone and my parents at work, I felt a strange pleasant whiff of some perfume present in my room. I learned later that it was the scent of almond.

Victor : Or cyanide.

Andrei : Exactly. Well, soon I developed symptoms of cardiac arrest, and I started panting. I must admit that despite my chronic TB and periodic coughing of blood, I had never faced the prospect of imminent death. In short, dying is difficult if it’s the first time you’ve experienced it. Panicking, I gulped a huge amount of eleutherococcus’ extract, you know a plant of the ginseng family. They give it as a stimulant to cosmonauts or sportsmen. May be it’s this stuff that saved me; I don’t know.