The October Circle Read online

  The audience bursts into applause. “Bravo, bravo, bravissimo,” cries Valyo.

  They are halfway down the long flight of stairs — the puppet of Mister Dancho, the Dwarf and Mister Dancho — when a figure leaps out of the darkness onto the landing on the ground floor. He is dressed in black and wears chalk white pancake make-up on his face. For a moment everyone assumes he is part of the Dwarf’s act.

  The trio on the stairs freezes.

  “It’s him again,” the American girl whispers.

  Tacho turns to the Flag Holder. “Now you will believe me. Do you recognize him?”

  “I’m — I’m not sure.”

  The Mime’s eyes demand silence. He pivots on his heel and bows deeply to the three figures on the stairs above him. The puppet of Dancho, and then the Dwarf, and then Dancho bow back. Then the Mime turns toward the audience and takes it in with a deep bow. Some of the people in the front row bow back. The Mime looks around angrily and bows again, insisting. This time everyone responds. As the Mime takes a single step forward and begins his performance, the only sound in the room comes from the projector throwing its pornographic pictures onto the screen.

  With his hands the Mime creates pieces of cloth billowing out of the sky. Vehicles of some sort are climbing over mountains. Planes are landing at an airport. There is a sense of urgency and organization to what he is describing. The pieces of cloth, the vehicles, the men from the planes are converging now, have come together, have become like a wave in the ocean. Others watch its progress from the side with fright, with amazement, with a sense of betrayal, with a feeling that this is the end and the beginning of recorded history. Some of the younger ones in the path of the wave argue with it, pry up bricks from the pavement and throw them at it, put their bodies in its path. But they are swept away. Nothing can slow it. There is a great surge of people into the streets. There is shock, panic, dispair, a sense of having lost something. Two or three men have their wrists handcuffed behind their backs and are led away, far away. A small boy pasting posters on a wall crumples to the ground. The body is covered with a jacket and loaded into an ambulance. Someone places a bouquet of flowers on the spot where he fell. Flags come down and others are hauled up. Clocks stop. People weep. Night comes, but not calm.

  The Mime assumes his impassive face, signaling the end of his performance, and bows.

  And then he is gone.

  The Dwarf’s guests look at each other uncomfortably. The same thought occurs to everyone.

  “What he is describing — “ The Racer begins, and the Flag Holder finishes the sentence:

  “ — is happening now.”

  The puppet of Mister Dancho collapses with its head on its chest, and the Dwarf, black strings dangling from his hands and elbows and knees and head, climbs back up the stairs. He returns almost immediately with a large short-wave radio, which he places on the landing. People turn their backs on the pornographic film and huddle around the radio. The dial skids across a band of static and words and notes and comes to rest on a male voice speaking Russian with an American accent. Occasionally the voice fades, but it always comes back again.

  “… reports that occupation troops approaching the radio station are firing tracer bullets and live ammunition. They are a few dozen meters from the building now. A barricade has been erected facing Wenceslas Square. Several hundred people are trying to stop the advancing tanks with their bodies. The radio building has been hit by dozens of shots and is being buzzed by aircraft of the Antonov type. Czechoslovak Radio asks the people to try and engage the troops in conversation — it is our only weapon, they say. Now the broadcasts of Czechoslovak Radio are coming to an end. The national anthem is being played. A voice announces over the air that the staff is remaining in the studio and will continue broadcasting the news as long as possible. But the speaker warns: when you hear voices on the radio you are not familiar with, do not believe them!”

  The overhead lights come on. Some of the guests are already leaving.

  “Goddamn Bolsheviks,” Mister Dancho exclaims disgustedly. “They’re a bunch of gangsters.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Poleon whispers, pulling his ex-wife toward the door.

  “But my coat — “

  “Forget your coat, damnit.”

  “For god’s sake, turn that thing off,” the Racer snaps. The pornographic movie is still playing. The Dwarf says something in Hungarian and the girl who was to have been his “bride” ducks behind the screen and pulls the plug out of the wall.

  Octobrina sinks onto the landing. “I told you hope was a luxury,” she says bitterly. She buries her face in her hands, sobbing softly.

  “They are what the Romans called lacrimae rerum” Popov remarks. Almost shyly, he explains:

  “That means, tears of events.”

  The dozen or so people left in the room gather around the Flag Holder.

  “Oh, Lev,” the Rabbit gasps, near to tears too.

  “There is only one thing to do,” Valyo declares. “The Czechs must defend their integrity like the pupil of one’s eye.”

  “How could they do it?” the Racer wants to know. “How could they betray us like this?”

  The Flag Holder’s hands are shaking as he speaks. “Our condition—one of utter subservience to corrupt ideas — is a judgment on us. What we must understand from all this is: We, by our inactivity, are the invaders of the human spirit.”

  The Rabbit settles down next to Octobrina and takes her hand. “A group of students once asked Dubek, ‘What are the guarantees that the old days will not be back?’ And he told them, You are the guarantee. There is only one path’ “ — Elisabeta’s voice breaks — “ and that is forward.’ “

  Lev Mendeleyev looks into the faces of his friends. “He is more of a Flag Holder to his people than I am to mine.” After a while, he adds:

  “For us too there is only one path.”

  5

  THEY SKIP the Milk Bar the next day and meet instead in the Jewish Centre on Patrice Lumumba. Taking care to straggle in casually and separately (their conspiratorial juices are already flowing) they file past the English language sign just inside the main door (“Welcome to the Juish Centre — donations in any currency are thankful”), past an original “Dreyfus is Innocent” poster (a gift from Dancho), past the black marble Star of David about the size of a spread-eagled man with the eternal flame in the middle that has a habit of going out at the height of memorial services. One flight up they make their way through the Memorial Museum, a collection of photographs and paintings and etchings and maps glued on to plywood panels stretched between floor-to-ceiling metal poles. The display, which looks at first glance like a labyrinth of scaffolding, is meticulously organized. You come in one door to be confronted by a four-color map that shows where in Europe the concentration camps were. (Like sprinkles on ice cream cones, they were everywhere.) You follow the red footprints painted on the floor (children often ignore the walls and leap playfully from footprint to footprint) and wind up, eighty-eight footprints later, facing a tall, narrow photograph of a chimney with smoke coming out of it. At which point, as the Flag Holder put it, “You know everything there is to know about concentration camps — and nothing.”

  As the Director of the Centre and the editor of Sofia’s only Jewish newspaper (a monthly, with a circulation of 5000), Lev Mendeleyev had a hand in setting up the Memorial Museum. He also survived seven months in Auschwitz. So when he spoke about concentration camps (which was rarely), it was with a certain amount of authority. “We are the custodians of terror,” he once told a group of American Jews who stopped off in Sofia on their way back from Israel, “terror lodged like a splinter in our memory; terror recollected in tranquillity; terror alphabetized, systematized, catalogued, sorted, arranged chronologically, indexed, numbered and codified. And not comprehended.”

  The visitors, who felt more at home with abstractions such as “six million” than the Flag Holder, left for Yugoslavia a day earlier tha
n their schedule called for.

  Now the members of the October Circle gather in the large, bare room behind the Memorial Museum that serves the Director as an office. The two Jewish volunteers who put in a few hours a week “rolling psychological bandages” (Octobrina’s phrase) have been sent home for the day. Great flakes of paint are peeling away from the high ceiling. Three of the four windows in the room are wide open; the fourth, which is right above the ventilator for the only toilet in the building, has been nailed shut. Trolleys run back and forth beneath the window; the soft friction of their wheels cause the panes of glass to vibrate, as if from a distant earthquake. A small electric fan placed atop the bookcase with glass doors lifts loose papers with currents of warm air. The Flag Holder sits on a wooden desk chair, his jacket off, his tie loosened, his shirt sticking to his back, staring intently at the Cyrillic keyboard of his ancient Remington.

  “I saw the Minister in front of the State Bank this morning,” he remarks. He pauses to light another Rodopi, and pulls on the new one. “His bodyguard was holding open the door of his limousine, but he stopped to chat anyhow. He talked about the weather. He talked about the German tourists flocking to the Black Sea. He talked about your Sofia-Athens bicycle race, Tacho; apparently he’s been assigned the chore of turning up at the frontier for the crossing ceremony. He mentioned the death of Alexander Denev, our former Flag Holder; he said he had just approved a pension for his widow. He asked about the Centre. He asked about my newspaper. He asked when I was taking a vacation and where. Not a word about Czechoslovakia.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t heard about it yet,” sneers Mister Dancho. That brings a grim laugh.

  “What’s more likely,” Octobrina quips, “he hasn’t worked out what the Party line is yet.” She puffs mischievously on her cigarette holder.

  “All political parties have the same line,” the Racer reminds her. “ ‘You’ve never had it so good, and the best is yet to come.’ “

  “Suspect every Party line,” declares the Flag Holder. And he adds almost reluctantly, in a voice that seems to come from the crusted lips of a man suddenly grown old:

  “Watch out for vanguards that propose to make revolution on someone else’s behalf.”

  Popov hasn’t heard a word, but the rest of them lower their eyes to the floor and the Racer, talking to the floor, says the obvious:

  “We were the vanguard that made revolution on someone else’s behalf.”

  “We joined the Party when the joining of the Party created the Party,” Octobrina appeals earnestly. “Surely that …” The thought trails off into silence, and the silence (broken only by a softly exhaled “Sssssssss” from Popov, so light and inaudible it seems to sail around the room on the current from the fan) puts them on new ground, and the newness of it makes them edgy. Dan-cho scrapes his chair around so that it faces the fan and opens his collar button to expose his neck to its breeze.

  “It’s all a crock of—” Dancho cuts himself off and turns sheepishly to Octobrina. “Dear lady, excuse my gutter language.”

  “But you didn’t say anything,” Octobrina assures him.

  “He never says anything,” Valyo remarks.

  Dancho wrenches around. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Calm down, friend,” the Racer pleads. “He was only joking.”

  “I was only joking,” echoes Valyo.

  Dancho returns to the breeze.

  Popov sits forward in his chair. “How about this one: ‘Can I be only a witness to history?’ “ He peers out over his pince-nez, waiting to see if anyone can identify the quote.

  “It sounds like Count Tolstoy,” Octobrina says absently.

  “Lenin, before he rode that sealed railroad car across Germany to join the revolutionaries,” Valyo guesses.

  “Our one only Georgi Dimitrov, when he being in trial for putting fire to that Nazi Reichstag,” says the Dwarf. An automobile horn sounds and the dog, Dog, lifts his sightless eyes to listen.

  “You’re way off,” Mister Dancho maintains. “It smells Western. Freud maybe. Or Nietzsche. Or Spinoza or Kant or Aquinas — someone like that.”

  “No, no,” Popov announces happily. “It is the Frenchman Camus.”

  “I was closest,” alleges Dancho.

  “How did you decide that?” Valyo challenges.

  Dancho looks as if he is about to jump down his throat again, then shrugs and lets it drop. To the Dwarf, he says:

  “What about the Mime last night? Is he the one you knew from the circus — what’s his name again?”

  “Dreschko,” the Flag Holder supplies.

  “Is he this Dreschko?” Dancho inquires.

  “Not thinking so,” Angel shakes his head. “Fat Lady she says she remembering Dreschko very good, and the Mime from last night he too short for him. She says he being Mime who committed to be in insane asylum about eight, maybe ten years ago. Name of Drumev, she says.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Octobrina breaks in. “Poleon’s going around telling everyone the Mime is the crazy half brother of that general who defected a few years ago — “

  “Bonev?” the Racer asks.

  “That’s the one: Bonev. Poleon says he went to school with Bonev and met the half brother once. The family kept him locked in the attic until the housing authority expropriated it. Then they sent him away to work on a collective farm in the South.”

  Tacho is shaking his head. “I’d bet my life on it — it’s Dreschko.”

  “Fat Lady, she got a good memory,” Angel argues. For sure it’s that crazy Drumev fellow.”

  “Poleon seemed quite certain,” Octobrina offers, baffled.

  The Racer stands up to unstick his trousers from the chair, and then sits down again. “You’re sure the Rabbit knows to come here?”

  “She knows,” the Flag Holder says.

  There are footfalls in the Memorial Museum next door; someone is following the eighty-eight red footprints. “Ah, at last,” sighs Octobrina. The Rabbit hurries into the room.

  “You won’t believe how many militiamen there are in Sofia,” she says breathlessly. “I swear there is one on every corner.”

  “But how is that possible,” Dancho jokes grimly. “We haven’t taken any decision yet.”

  “In a police state,” the Dwarf says, “police know what you going do before you know what you going do.”

  “Poleon’s just done a film entitled Police State” Dancho remembers. “The censors are dining on it now.”

  “Something about Poleon rubs me the wrong way,” the Flag Holder confesses. To the Rabbit, he says:

  “Tell us what you’ve heard.”

  The Rabbit settles into a chair and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. Octobrina pulls a delicate accordion fan from her pocketbook and hands it to Elisabeta. The Rabbit flips it open and begins fanning herself.

  “There was fighting around the radio station last night,” she reports, “but nothing that looks like organized resistance.”

  “Where is the Czech army?” the Racer asks.

  “In their pubs probably,” sneers Dancho.

  The Rabbit shakes her head. “The army’s been confined to barracks.”

  “On whose orders?” The Flag Holder leans forward. “The Russians?”

  “Apparently the Czechs,” replies the Rabbit. “Their military people issued orders saying that resistance would be futile. They claim there are half a million soldiers involved in the invasion, mostly Russian, but with units from the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary and” — she flashes a look at Lev — “our paratroopers. The whole thing was planned down to the last detail. They took the airport at Prague first, and then started bringing in troop transports at the rate of one a minute for hours. The Soviet military attache here is very pleased with himself. He was boasting that nobody ever credited the Russians with an airlift capability. He said they surrounded most of the government and Party buildings before the Czechs knew they were even in the country.”

>   “Bully for the bastards,” Dancho groans. The Racer observes:

  “It doesn’t look much like a spur-of-the-moment affair, does it? Which means that all the time they were talking to the Czechs — at Cierna had Tisou, at Bratislava — they knew they were going in.”

  The Rabbit hands the fan back to Octobrina with a damp smile. “Dubek’s been taken to Moscow,” she continues. “Nobody knows anything on him for sure, but our people assume he’ll be tried for treason and shot as soon as things quiet down. Czech Radio says — “

  “I thought Russians they occupied Radio — “ the Dwarf interrupts.

  “They did,” Elisabeta explains, “but Dubek’s people must have hidden transmitters around the country, because the reformers are still broadcasting bulletins. The Russians are flying in jamming equipment, but that will take a day or so to set up. Anyhow, Czech Radio has called a general strike for noon tomorrow. And they’ve warned everyone to remove all street and house number signs to make it more difficult for the Russians to find people they want to arrest.”

  The Flag Holder and the Racer exchanged looks. “So it is starting,” Tacho comments.

  Valyo asks whether the Russians have been able to field a collaborationist government.

  “That’s the strange part,” the Rabbit says. “The Russians haven’t formed one yet. It’s apparently the only flaw in the operation. The Russians must have a collaborationist government to support their story about being invited in. I saw some mimeographed material this morning for distribution to regional Party leaders. It comes straight from the Soviet Embassy by the feel of it. The paper makes the case that Moscow has the moral right to intervene anywhere in the Socialist Commonwealth to prevent counterrevolution — “

  “Counter — that’s a laugh,” snorts Dancho.

  “And they claim that a counterrevolutionary situation existed in Czechoslovakia.”

  “But how can they say that?” cries Octobrina. “It wasn’t at all like Hungary. There were no hostilities — “