TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=89TT0983> <title> Apr. 10, 1989: The Place Of The Skull </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989 Apr. 10, 1989 The New USSR </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> BOOKS, Page 120 THE PLACE OF THE SKULL </hdr> <body> One of Gorbachev's favorite authors, Chingiz Aitmatov, offers a violent portrait of drug runners and nature-hating bureaucrats in his latest novel. Cast as a morality drama of Dostoyevskian power, Aitmatov's tale can also be read as a literary reflection of Gorbachev's reforms By Chingiz Aitmatov Few novels have caused as much of a stir in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union as The Place of the Skull, by Chingiz Aitmatov. Set in Soviet Central Asia, it is primarily the story of Avdiy Kallistratov, a journalist who infiltrates a gang of anasha (marijuana) smugglers. An ex-seminarian, Avdiy repeatedly attempts to convert drug runners and wildlife predators to God until he meets his own calvary in the Moyun-Kum steppes of Kazakhstan. The Place of the Skull is a searing attack on drugs, the destruction of wildlife, the stupidity of Communist Party officials in the countryside. But on a deeper level the novel is a metaphysical reflection on the confrontation between good and evil, infused with the magical realism that dominates the works of such novelists as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. When the literary monthly Novy Mir published the novel in two installments in 1986, the magazine's print run of 427,000 sold out immediately, and millions of copies of the book have been sold in the Soviet Union. Translated into English, The Place of the Skull will be published later this month in the U.S. (Grove; $20.95). A native of the Soviet Asian republic of Kirghizia, Aitmatov, 60, is one of his country's best-known writers. His most famous fan: Gorbachev, who says he has read nearly every word Aitmatov has written. In the first excerpt, Avdiy has just been thrown off a train by drug smugglers. Left to die in a railway ditch, Avdiy conjures up the conversation between Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate shortly before the Crucifixion. In the second excerpt, Avdiy undergoes his own crucifixion. Taken together, the scenes create an allegory not only of good vs. evil but also of state power vs. the individual. IT WAS A HOT morning in Jerusalem, promising an even hotter day. On the Arched Terrace of Herod's palace, beneath the marbled colonnade where Pontius Pilate had ordered his seat to be placed, a gentle breeze blew from below to cool the sandaled feet. The tops of the triangular poplars in the great garden rustled quietly, their leaves prematurely yellowed in the dryness of this year. From the Arched Terrace perched on this stony mount, there was a view of the whole city, shimmering in the heat. The city boundaries, always clearly demarcated, seemed today to merge into the border of the white desert beyond. That morning, a single bird circled high above the great garden, wings spread wide, passing in regular sweeps as though swinging like a pendulum suspended from the heavens. It had to be an eagle or a hawk, since no other bird would have the patience to circle so slowly or so long through the furnace of the sky. When he noticed Jesus of Nazareth, who stood shifting his weight before him, glance upward at the bird, the Procurator was indignant and even offended at the glance. He spoke irritably and harshly: "Why look up, King of the Jews? That's your death circling above!" "Death circles above us all," answered Jesus quietly, automatically putting his hand to the dust-stained bruise on his eye. As they led him to the judgment of the Sanhedrin, he had been attacked by a crowd whipped up by the priests and elders. Had they forgotten how they had once shouted as he rode in through the city gates on the gray she-ass with her colt running behind, how they acclaimed him in hope and threw flowers beneath the hooves of the ass? "Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest!" Now he stood frowning, his clothes torn, before Pontius Pilate, waiting for whatever might happen next. The Procurator was badly out of sorts and mainly, strangely enough, with himself, with the sluggish way his mind was working and with his inability to accept a decision. Such a thing had never happened to him before, either during his time as an active soldier in the Roman army or during his tour of duty as a Procurator. Laughable! Instead of giving his immediate approval to the sentence passed by the Sanhedrin and cutting down his work load, he was dragging out the interrogation. It would have been so simple to summon the Chief Priest and his retinue, who were waiting for his call, and say, "Here you are. Take your prisoner, and do with him what you have decided." And yet something prevented Pontius Pilate from taking this simple step. Was this fool worth taking trouble over? "What do you really mean by `bringing the words of your Father to the people'? You mean making fools of them, getting the ignorant masses over to your side! Perhaps you should be bringing His word to me as well? I'm a person, too, you know!" "You, Roman Governor, have no need of it as yet, for you do not suffer or thirst for another kind of life. For you, there is nothing higher." "Right. There is nothing higher than the power of Rome. I hope that is what you meant to say?" "That is what you think, Governor." "That is what clever men have always thought," Pilate corrected him condescendingly. "That is why they say that Caesar is not a god, but God is like Caesar. Convince me that it is not so, if you are so sure of yourself. Are you sure that Caesar is less than God?" "He is mortal." "Obviously. But while he is alive and well, is there God above Caesar for men?" "There is, Roman Governor, if you choose another dimension of being." "Enough!" cried the Procurator. "We're wasting our time." Pontius Pilate gives Jesus one last chance to recant, but he refuses, explaining why he is prepared to die for what he believes in. "Let us talk like free men," said Pilate. "I am in no way dependent on you, and you, as you understand, are on the threshold of complete freedom, so let's be frank. Did you tell your disciples that if you were crucified, you would rise again on the third day, and once arisen, would come back to earth for a Last Judgment of those who are alive today, and those who are yet to be born, of all generations since the creation of the world? What of the Last Judgment?" "Has it not struck you, Roman ruler, that it has long since commenced for us?" "Are you trying to say that the whole of our life is one Last Judgment?" "You're not far from the truth. Since our first parents were driven from the Garden of Eden, what a pit of evil has yawned beneath us, what wars, cruelty, murders, persecutions, injustice and humiliation the human race has known! And all the terrible sins against goodness, against nature committed on this earth since the world began, what are they, if not a punishment far greater than the Last Judgment? Is not the purpose of history to draw thinking creation closer to the divine heights of love and sympathy? Instead of drawing closer, however, many lives have been broken in the course of human history, with no end in sight to the evil that surges up on every side like waves in the ocean. Is not life in this hell worse than any Last Judgment?" "Well, Jesus of Nazareth, I have listened most carefully to all you had to say. Do you not have too much hope in human faith, forgetting how fickle and venal they are out there in the streets and the squares? One thing puzzles me: Why are you lighting a fire in which you yourself will be the first to perish? Without the Caesars, human society could not exist. It needs the power and majesty of the few and the subjugation of the many. That is why, in the name of Tiberius, I rule over the Jews. This is my role in life, and my conscience is at peace. There is no greater honor than to serve all-conquering Rome!" "You are no exception, Roman Governor. Almost every man thirsts for power over at least one fellow creature. That is man's misfortune. Nations will perish in the struggle for power and land. They will tear each other up by the roots and eradicate each other in the struggle." "Stop! I am not one of your pupils. He who is strongest seizes power, and the strongest will always rule the world. This rule is as firm as the stars in the sky. It is useless to care for the human race, and useless for you to want to save it at the price of your own life. Men will always follow the Caesars as the sheep follow their shepherds and, bowing to strength and privilege, will respect the one who proves himself most merciless and most powerful. Reflect on your illusions and mistakes at least now, when the hour has come for you to go under guard to the Place of the Skull. You see the root of all evil in men's love of power, in subjugating lands and people by force, but by doing so you are only compounding your guilt in the eyes of the authorities, for he who is against power is also, de facto, against those who exercise that power. You wish to hinder the growing power of Rome, to prevent its taking control of all the world. Just to want such a thing is enough to condemn you three times over!" The Procurator pulled himself up to his full height beneath the arches of the terrace and stood there, tall and broad-browed, with big features and a firm stare, in his snow-white toga. "Just one more time, for the record," he said. "Father: What do you say his name was? Joseph. Mother: Mary. From Nazareth. Thirty-three years old. Unmarried. No children. Incited the people to revolt. Threatened to destroy the great Temple at Jerusalem and rebuild it within three days. Made himself out to be a prophet, the King of the Jews. There's the story of your life in a nutshell." "Never mind the story of my life. One thing I will tell you, though, Pontius Pilate, is that yours will find a place in history," said Jesus the Nazarene quietly, with a direct, serious look into the Procurator's eyes. "Forever." Pontius Pilate brushed the suggestion aside, flattered, however, by the notion. Suddenly he changed his tone and announced triumphantly, "It's our glorious Emperor Tiberius who will live forever in history. Glory to his name! We are merely his faithful outriders, nothing more." "You know, you really will find a place in history, Pontius Pilate," he repeated stubbornly, the man who was setting off for the Place of the Skull, beyond the city walls... Avdiy awakes from his dream and eventually is enlisted into helping local authorities boost their meat-production figures by massacring herds of antelope. Assigned to a five-man team led by the savagely cruel Ober Kandalov, who seems to be Aitmatov's stand-in for Stalin, Avdiy is so appalled by the slaughter that he implores the hunters to stop and turn to God. A drunken Kandalov orders his men to beat Avdiy. Then, enthroned on a crate, he gives Avdiy one more chance to recant. "SO, YOU BASTARD, thought you'd frighten us with your God, did you? Wanted to ram your God down our throats, you slime! You won't frighten us with God; you chose the wrong congregation this time, you filth. "We're carrying out an official government assignment, fulfilling the plan, and you're trying to implement economic sabotage. You're a bastard, an enemy of the people, an enemy of the people and the state. There's no room for enemies, wreckers and saboteurs like you! It was Stalin who said, `He who is not with us is against us.' Enemies of the people should be rooted out and destroyed! And you, you church rat, what have you been doing? Sowing subversion! You wanted to take us for a ride, all the way to the front door of the church perhaps, eh? I could strangle you, you runt, as an enemy of the people, and I would be thanked for it, seeing as you're an imperialist agent, you snake! I'm your higher authority now, so you renounce your God or it'll be curtains for you, you pig!" Avdiy could not stay up on his knees and fell to the ground. They lifted him up. "Answer me, snake," roared Ober Kandalov. "Renounce your God! Say there's no God!" "There is a God," groaned Avdiy weakly. "So that's the way it is!" screeched Mishash. "Like I said, you tell the bastard one thing, and he answers just the opposite!" Breathless with anger, Kandalov shook Avdiy again by the scruff of his neck. "Let me tell you something, God lover, we're going to put on a little show for you that you'll remember all the rest of your days! Haul him over to that tree there, hang him up, hang the bastard up!" They hauled Avdiy over to a gnarled saxaul tree spreading its branches at the edge of the hollow. "Bring the rope!" shouted Ober. Their thuggish horseplay was taking an ominous turn. A stupid practical joke now threatened to turn into a real lynching. "There's only one problem, dammit, no cross and nails in this stinking steppe! A real crying shame!" grumbled Mishash, noisily cracking off twigs of the saxaul. "That would have been the thing, to crucify the bastard!" "What the hell, we'll tie him on with ropes! It'll be as good as any nails!" proposed Ober. "We'll stretch him out by the arms and legs like a frog and lash him so tight he can't even twitch! Let him hang there till morning, and then he'll learn what's what! I taught worse than him to dance to my tune in the army! Hang him up on that branch over there, the high one! Twist his arm over the top branch and his leg under the bottom one!" The deed was done, and Avdiy was incapable of any resistance. Lashed to the gnarled saxaul tree, bound hand and foot with ropes, he dangled like a cured skin hung out to dry. Avdiy could still hear his tormentors cursing, but as if from a distance. There was a shooting pain in his abdomen, and his back felt as if some ligament had been snapped or torn, so agonizingly did it hurt. The look of him, something between a scarecrow and a gibbet, amused them all no end. Ober was particularly inspired. He had visions of far more impressive and extensive spectacles; why stop at one rat hanging there in the middle of the steppe? "That's what I'd do with the lot of them, like it or lump it, and don't you forget it!" he threatened, staring up at Avdiy. "I'd string them all up, everyone who's against us, not like this but so's they'd croak right away. Hang the lot of them, and leave them hanging in a long line all around the world, circling it like a hoop, then no one would ever dare oppose a single word we said, and they'd all dance to our tune. Come on now, Commissars, let's have another! What the hell, we only live once!" The final flood of human life was moving in. Before Avdiy's fading eyes there was a vision of water, an infinite, uninterrupted expanse without beginning and without end. The water seethed soundlessly, and silent white waves rolled across its surface, like a snowstorm over a field. On the very edge of that soundless sea he could just make out the figure of a man, and Avdiy recognized him: it was his father, Deacon Kallistratov. Then Avdiy heard his own voice, speaking as a boy, repeating to his father his favorite prayer about a sunken ship, just as he had repeated it so often at home in his childhood, standing beside the old piano. Only now the distance between them was immense, and he heard his father's voice ringing with inspiration, reverberating across the surface of the earth: "I ask but for one thing, one miracle. As long as night follows day and day follows night in the way ordained by You for our earth, as it spins through the empty wastes of space, as long as the spray beats salty into the air and the seagulls cry, may the ship hold its course for the radiant city on the distant ocean shore, though none may cast anchor there in all the eons of time. Amen." All night long, the silence of the boundless Moyun-Kum savanna was flooded with bright, blinding moonlight, illuminating the stiffened figure of a man crucified on a saxaul tree. The figure was like a large bird with outspread wings, struck down as it soared heavenward and blown into the branches. </body> </article> </text>