Not much of an experiment

About the novel by Vsevolod Benigsen

By publishing Vsevolod Benigsen's debut novel in the July issue, the editors of Znamya took care of the honor of their proofreaders. The title is typed in such a way that it is impossible to even suspect a typo - “GenAcid”. A strange (evoking dark associations) word is deciphered quickly. GENACIDE is the State Unified National Idea, which, according to the decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1458, is “the idea of ​​​​preserving and maintaining the cultural (and specifically literary) heritage of our homeland.” According to the decree, all adult citizens of the Russian Federation are required to learn the literary texts assigned to them (entirely or fragments) within three weeks (expiring exactly before the New Year). The consequences of this “creative, positive and culturally oriented” decree in the godforsaken village of Bolshie Ushchery are described in the novel with a comically illiterate, but no less ominous title.

“By the way, New Year was not celebrated that time (the only one in the history of the village). According to the old tradition, the Bolshoyushers put up Christmas trees no earlier than December 31, but on the 31st there was a terrible hangover, interrogations and general depression - what a holiday there is.” The interrogations were carried out in connection with the death of two people - a refugee from Tajikistan Mansur and the main character, librarian Anton Pakhomov, who intended to leave immediately after the New Year with his Bolsheushchersky wife (she finally agreed) to his native Moscow, where he had once graduated from the Faculty of History - - and Bulda dogs. The Bolsheviks killed Bulda and Mansur along the way. Anton, who distributed texts for memorization among the villagers, was considered responsible for the suicide of one of the men, whose literary impressions (Chekhov and Baratynsky) terribly resonated with the life drama of an ordinary person (called deliberately “gray” - Sergei Serikov), previously unnoticed by him. However, they did not intend to execute the librarian (to mark him aside - yes). The main object of hatred was his “lair”, the damned library, from where the book infection spread throughout the village, quarreling with the Bolshoyushers and killing Serikov. But when Anton, defending the library, shouted out to the crowd the truth he had recently discovered (there was no presidential decree, an experiment was carried out in Big Ushchy), his fate was decided (“Are you, bitch, the one who decided to conduct experiments on living people?”). As is the fate of the book depository.

The investigation did not produce any results. All participants in the massacre “shifted the blame onto their neighbor; they could not remember who first hit or set the fire, as they were “drunk.” Women protected their husbands, husbands shielded their wives, and friends shielded each other.” Although just now there was a war of all against all in the village. If in the first days after the decree, the Bolshaya Ushchers enthusiastically read each other the texts entrusted to them, then the “prose writers” took up arms against the “poets”, then stratification began by genres and styles, and in the end everyone was left with their own personal “letters”. But it was then that Serikov hanged himself. And exactly what happened was what the stranger Anton, running to the library (to his death), guessed. “We are not fighting “for”, we are fighting “against”. Let us destroy everything first. Give us trouble! (One of the characters has this surname. - A.N. ) Because trouble is not some fairy tale about a bright future. Trouble is a bright present. Trouble gives you a free hand. Only it gives that freedom that neither some abstract ideal, nor quiet happiness, nor democratic principles will ever give. Chaos. This is what will truly unite us. And its components. Trouble, fear and the desire to survive.”

Anton once wrote a thesis on the meaninglessness of constantly mythologized history, but “all this was theory, empty words, dry casuistry. History was an abstract quantity that had neither form nor weight. Now she came to life, gaining volume and flesh.” And she found it, only to immediately lose it: “So the two murders hung there as being committed by an “unknown group of persons.” And killing a dog first became “cruelty to animals,” and then “acceptable self-defense.”

So, GENACID was tested in one single village. From which the Moscow smart guy couldn’t get out. From which Mitka Klimov rushed out, having knocked up the postwoman Katka. (Her “YEEHAAAAAL!!!” at the railway station is an undoubted reminiscence of “Resurrection”, although what the poor abandoned girl taught was not at all a Tolstoy fragment.) And from which for some reason the paramedic Zimin, abandoned by his wife and raising his daughter alone, does not leave (he is a lot earlier Pakhomov guessed about the experiment). Just like the light-headed but heavy-drinking tractor driver Valera. (For the third year they have been luring him to the city with a salary and prospects, but he is of no use. After the pogrom, Valera tries, as before, to read poetry, gets confused, drinks, cries, reproaches himself for a good deed, because of which he could not prevent the pogrom: when Katka had a miscarriage right at the station, Valera, who took her there, stayed with the poor man in the hospital.) Like Mitka Klimov’s parents. Like Porebrikov, who on drunken days relieves his melancholy with telephone terror, and when he sobers up, puts in order no matter how hopeless equipment. And where, exactly, should we go? The experiment involves implementation. And the Great Usher tragedy (“the goat’s song”) is not as “experimental” as it might seem upon a quick reading.

Katka took the daughter of the murdered Mansur - “a mother without a child and a child without parents” came together. She celebrated the New Year together with the half-orphan - Zimin's daughter, whom her father could not deprive of the holiday. And this is more encouraging than the final (quite expected) reprise: the unburned books were taken away from the ashes by the Bolshoi Uzherians. “For memory, probably.” About the next episode of our history. No, not meaningless, but not reducible to any “idea”. The author does not offer conclusions - neither do I.

PS While reading “GenAcid”, I remembered many times two wonderful stories of the early 90s - “Voskoboev and Elizaveta” by Andrei Dmitriev and “The War of the Stooges” by Alexei Slapovsky. I’m not at all sure that Bennigsen was guided by them. But I am sure that literary evolution has a logic.

Andrey NEMZER