The Big Green Tent (54 page)

In contrast to Dmitry, his mother was a complete failure. When it came time for their house to be demolished and for her to get an apartment in a new building—the one-room apartment with gas and hot water seemed like heaven to her—his mother took a spill and died instantly, as had her mother. She was awarded her heavenly dwelling, not as a result of all the tedious paperwork necessary for the transaction—as a soldier's widow, an invalid of the paltry third class, and a high-achiever of Communist labor—but just like that, without lifting a finger. The upshot was that Dmitry's dream of moving his mother to the capital, of shrewdly exchanging the apartment in Podolsk (which she never received) for a single room in Moscow, was all for nought. Through her bad luck, his mother had liberated her son from the fuss and bother of an apartment exchange and a move.

He had always pitied her, poor thing. Very early on, however, he had decided that he would not be like his mother—he would leave and make something of himself, he would cut the contemptible country hick out of his very being. After seven years of primary and secondary school, he enrolled in nursing school. There were few men there. His presence was valued, and he applied himself to his studies. Then came the army, where he was assigned to a medical unit, thus making using of his education. After the army, he didn't stay in Podolsk, but entered medical school in Moscow, where he was accepted on the strength of his army service, without having to compete for a spot. Since that time he had been a true city man.

All that remained of Dulin's rural childhood was the habit of working with animals. Sometimes he even missed having a cat in the house, and he brought home Marinka's Saturday bunny because he liked feeling the creature's animal warmth in his own, human, hands. But Nina didn't want animals in the house, not even a cat. And what Nina did not want, Dulin did not do.

They got married in the third year of medical school. Dmitry was older than Nina by six years. She was rather stunted, and he enticed her with his height, his seriousness, and his modesty. She was not mistaken in the least—nor was he. Dmitry owed everything to his wife: his residence permit in Moscow, and his internship in neurology, and then his graduate studies. He had not aspired to that himself; but through her friends, Nina secured him a place in a research institute. She herself worked as a doctor at a local clinic, for which she was given an apartment, thus bypassing the waiting list.

Dulin initially resisted the idea of graduate school. He couldn't understand why it was necessary. If it was so important to her, why shouldn't she enroll in graduate school and defend her dissertation? But Nina had decided otherwise. Since the institute he entered for graduate studies specialized in psychiatry, and Dulin's particular field was neurology, he had to dip into some psychiatry textbooks to pass the entrance exam. He was assigned the topic of alcoholism—and he learned everything there was to know at the time: about changes in the psyche, behavioral responses of alcoholics, delirium tremens, and other fascinating things.

For three years Marinka played with the rabbits, while Dulin forced his rabbits to drink diluted spirits, pouring it into them through a funnel since the test animals refused to drink it on their own. Then Dulin defended his dissertation and became a junior researcher. He no longer brought the baby rabbits home, but now Marinka sometimes accompanied her father to the institute's vivarium. In addition to rabbits, there were also white rats, and cats and dogs. At one time there were even monkeys.

When Dulin finished his dissertation, he was suddenly filled with uncertainty: the results of his research were exactly what he had expected them to be, and his work had not yielded anything even remotely resembling a discovery. Karpov, his academic adviser and the head of the department, reassured him:

“Expecting a great deal of oneself is a fine quality in a scientist. I assure you, however, you can live a worthwhile life in science without making any discoveries. We are the workhorses of science. We are the ones who move it forward, not those who make discoveries, some of them quite dubious. And as for geniuses … we know what these geniuses are like!”

Dulin understood perfectly well that his adviser was referring to Vinberg. Dulin had become acquainted with him by chance, on account of a fire that broke out in Vinberg's laboratory. Two years before, when Dulin happened to be the only one on that floor, he was busy with his calculations when a wire shorted out and caught on fire. His keen sense of smell sniffed out the fire in Vinberg's lab, and he called the fire department; but even before they arrived, he managed to switch off the fuse box and put out the fire. And he prevented the firemen from even entering the lab, since he knew they would only cause chaos, and would steal things, besides. He spoke firmly to the fire chief, let him have a look around, and signed the protocol. Vinberg was grateful; and Dulin had been on friendly terms with him ever since.

Edwin Yakovlevich Vinberg was a real professor, with a brilliant education. And he was a rarity: he loved to talk about science. There was nothing he liked more than a question, in answer to which he would deliver a whole lecture. Because of his modest position and intellectual innocence, Dulin could never have expected to find any grounds for communication with this stellar individual. But the fire had afforded Dulin the right to visit the Vinbergs in the evenings for a chat over tea.

From him, Dr. Dulin learned things that never appeared in Soviet textbooks: about Dr. Freud, about archetypes, and about the psychology of the masses. Vinberg himself studied gerontology, forms of dementia in old age; but he seemed to know everything about everything, and had fascinating theories on every subject, including alcoholism.

Many people were suspicious of Vinberg. He had fled from the Fascists in Germany to the USSR even before the war. In Russia, he was arrested a month later. They protected him from the Fascists for nearly twenty years in the labor camps. After the death of Stalin, he was “rehabilitated”—it turned out he had been arrested by mistake. He was released, and very soon, in a matter of a few years, he assumed his rightful place—not in a career, of course, but in science. How many years he had spent in the camps! It would have been natural to suppose that there, as a doctor in the camp dispensary, he would have been unable to continue his work as a scientist. It turned out, however, that not only had he kept up with modern science, he was even in the forefront of it: he wrote two monographs right away, and he was awarded a doctorate without having defended a dissertation. Psychiatrists flocked to him for consultations from every corner of the land. His authority was undisputed, though he still had a fair number of detractors. Not everyone liked the fact that this quintessential stranger, moreover a Jew and a German to boot, was developing his legendary teachings and comporting himself with a European self-respect virtually unknown on our native soil.

“Dmitry Stepanovich!” he said to Dulin, in his heavy German accent, with irreproachable Russian grammar. “No one has yet studied the social nature of alcoholism, and the patterns of social behavior specific to alcoholics. There's no better place than Russia for studying this subject. Here, the entire country could serve as a platform for laboratory experiments. But where are the statistics about the relationship between alcohol use and aggression? They don't exist. If I were younger, I would certainly take on this topic. You ought to work on it, it's very promising! As for the somatic view, it's not terribly interesting. It would be fruitful, however, to work at the genetic level. But those rabbits of yours—they're not viable objects of study. They aren't drosophila! And alcohol dehydrogenase is the same in everyone, it's a simple fermentation process. No, no, if I were you I'd study alcohol and aggression.”

But Dulin didn't observe any alcohol-related aggression in his objects of study. The tipsy rabbits began to exhibit signs of tremors, then just fell asleep. Their appetite diminished, as well as their weight, but they remained peaceful creatures. They didn't bite, and they didn't attack humans. In short, there was no protest activity on their part. Moreover, the professor's arguments notwithstanding, the primary male, head of this alcoholic harem, not only did not become more aggressive, but actually lost his renowned rabbit potency. Every three months, one of his own sons took over where he had left off.

When Dulin worked up the courage to challenge Vinberg, saying that his research in no way confirmed the aggression of alcoholics, the professor only laughed.

“Dmitry Stepanovich, what about the workings of the higher nervous system? A human being is not a rabbit, of course, but a highly organized, complex being! Moreover, I would draw your attention to the fact that rabbits are vegetarians, and people, for the most part, are predators. In their eating habits people are closer to bears, which are omnivorous! Keep in mind that not a single species is comparable to
Homo sapiens
in the variety of its diet. Northern peoples are carnivorous, while in India, for example, there are huge swathes of the population that are exclusively vegetarian. As far as can be observed without scientific study, neither group outdoes the other in displays of aggression.”

The professor enjoyed his musings, rubbing his dry, cleanly scoured palms together in a gesture that suggested he was about to examine a patient.

“Very curious. Very curious. One must begin with biochemistry, I believe.
Der Mensch ist was er isst
. And what he drinks!” And just like that he laughed, showing his mouthful of pure metal teeth, which a local dentist, originally from Vienna, had fitted him with in Vorkuta. Dulin either recalled from the German he had managed to pick up at school, or simply guessed, that what Vinberg had said was: You are what you eat.

Vinberg knew everything there was to know in the world, or so it seemed: anthropology, Latin, and even genetics. But he hadn't been able to take care of his teeth. He was in a hurry to live, to read, to think; he had been in a hurry to write down all the idiosyncratic and untimely ideas that had descended on him in the northern latitudes.

He talked a great deal to whoever would listen, including Dulin. But there were some things he kept to himself, telling only those closest to him.

“A land of children!” he would say to his wife, whom he'd acquired through the camp dispensary. “A land of children! Culture blocks the natural impulses of adults; but not of children. And where there is no culture, blocking is absent. There is a cult of the father, of obedience, and at the same time an unmanageable childish aggression.”

Vera Samuilovna brushed this off disdainfully. She was the only one who would permit herself such a gesture.

“Edwin, what nonsense! What about the Germans? The most cultured country in Europe? Why didn't culture block their primitive, natural impulses?”

Vera Samuilovna attacked her husband with youthful passion, and Edwin Yakovlevich, as usual, fiddled with his nose, as though it were precisely in that organ that his intellect was concentrated.

“Another mechanism was set in motion, Vera, another mechanism.
Das ist klar. Selbstverständlich
. This can be proven. Levels of awareness—this is what we must consider.”

And he would fall silent for a long time before offering this theoretical proof.

They had no children. One boy had been born to them in the camps, but they had been unable to save him. All their energy, their entire store of talent that had remarkably survived and flourished, was invested in their profession. Vera Samuilovna was obsessed with her endocrinology. She synthesized artificial hormones, which she nearly believed could guarantee human immortality. Edwin Yakovlevich did not endorse his wife's views. He was not attracted by immortality. Their scientific interests converged in this fundamental conflict: gerontology by definition flew in the face of the idea of immortality. Vinberg was certain of this. But Vera believed in hormones.

The couple had plenty to discuss in their late-evening soirées. After the loss of their whole prewar way of life—conservatories, libraries, science and literature; after the camp barracks, the dispensaries, the necessity of curing every possible illness with no medicine at all; after all that, sitting in the nighttime stillness of their own tiny apartment, stuffed with books and records, in the warmth, with plenty of food, just the two of them, was their source of joy.

*   *   *

Dulin continued to study alcoholism, now not only from a scientific perspective, as theory, but in an applied, practical context as well. His department started a treatment program, which, unfortunately, didn't meet with any particular success. The salary was good, though—he received 170 rubles a month, plus a bonus.

Three years went by. Again, he got lucky, this time without Nina's influence. A position for a senior research fellow opened up when an elderly colleague retired. At the same time, quite unexpectedly, Dr. Ruzaev, the most promising doctor in their institute and one who had already defended his dissertation, was lured away by the Kazan Medical Institute.

A search was begun to fill these two positions. Dulin would never have considered applying on his own initiative, but the head of the department urged him on, telling him to get all the necessary papers in order. And in the autumn of 1972, Dulin was promoted to the position of senior research fellow! This was a stunning coup in the unfolding of his career. It took all winter for Dulin to get used to it. In the mornings, while he was shaving in the bathroom, as he scraped the foamy hillock covering his dark brown whiskers from his cheeks with a safety razor, he would look at himself in the mirror and say: “Dmitry Stepanovich Dulin, Senior Research Fellow.” He had expected it to take ten or fifteen years to reach this position, but suddenly—there it was!

And he felt pride, and uncertainty, all at once …

Things were going very well in the department. Now he had a new subject—alcohol-related paranoia—and two wards of patients whom he studied and treated. Gripped by fits of jealousy, inflamed with hallucinations, tormented by persecution manias, overwrought and excitable, or, on the contrary, listless and depressed, devoid of any sense of self-worth, pumped up or deflated by neuroleptic drugs, they bore very little resemblance to his soft, warm-eared rabbits. Aggression was always hovering just below the surface.