"Underground Passages" by Bakharevich — a novel that removes the hook of doubt
The plot is as follows: a Minsk tour guide and his poet wife emigrated in 2020. Now, Russians (Muscovites) who arrived from somewhere beyond the Urals under a Program live in their Minsk apartment; they have been assigned the names of the former residents, i.e., the "fugitives," and must "correctly" live out their lives... Siarhei Dubavets writes about Alhierd Bakharevich's new novel.
Alhierd Bakharevich's novel "Underground Passages". Photo: knihauka.com
Alhierd Bakharevich wrote the novel "Underground Passages" — about the transformation of a Belarusian emigrant into a Belarusian Berliner. The cult phrase of John F. Kennedy, "Ich bin ein Berliner," could serve as an epigraph here; it is repeated by the main character, who eventually settles in the house where "mentally close" Franz Kafka once lived.
The plot is as follows: a Minsk tour guide and his poet wife emigrated in 2020. Now, Russians (Muscovites) who arrived from somewhere beyond the Urals under a Program live in their Minsk apartment; they have been assigned the names of the former residents, i.e., the "fugitives," and must "correctly" live out their lives. The Russian is portrayed in the novel as a Soviet person, born with the awareness that he is here to save, he is a rescuer, a liberator, he is the "Savior." And in phone calls with the Berlin exile, this Savior cleverly wins, even inclining the Berliner to thoughts of suicide. His job is also like this — a gravedigger in a cemetery.
They call each other: the former owner of the Minsk apartment yearns to kill the Russian who stole his life, while the latter wants to amicably establish relations, so that there is peace and harmony in everything, almost friendship, so that it is "nice and neat."
The book reads in one breath; it brings to mind Bakharevich's novel "Alindarka's Children" with a similar theme, or the book "Bakharevich's Calendar," which I would call heroic. After all, not everyone is capable of writing an original calendar essay daily for a year on a website with their own understanding of events. In total, there are (for the year) 365 works. Probably, this experience with stories, in which intrigue is encrypted, was useful to the tour guide from "Underground Passages."
But one way or another, the theme of the entire book is lies, different forms of lies, different attitudes towards lies, and whether people in their mass are ready to accept lies as their "correct" choice ("After all, everything is good and we are happy in Belarus, everyone here speaks Russian").
Sometimes it seems that people have simply grown accustomed to the regime, to dangers, to lies, and begin to tolerate or not notice them. The Russian who arrived under the Program (who has already received his Belarusian passport) also "explains" this all the time. Even German colleagues of our emigrants speak of this as something insignificant. And here a hole forms — in the place of freedom.
The lie of the system, the lie of elections, the lie of courts, the lie of television, the lie of school... This is a big lie, a state-funded one, protected by the army, police, and KGB...
There is also a small lie, which is sometimes not so easy to discern. For example, the lie of talents-non-talents in literature. And there, in German salons, they talk about this, about talentless speakers before the public, who endlessly repeat the same words and who are paid for this, who can live for this, which is why emigrants travel from city to city for such meetings-gigs. At the same time, their own German poets from the town of Okerlo (this is discussed in a separate chapter) have no such chances, because they do not "sell" dictatorship, repression, and prisons, which are not present in Germany, and what they do have and "sell" has no demand.
But this, though important, is still one of many parallel lines in the novel. For example, we constantly remember and feel that the author turned 50, and this (the experience of age) is also one of the novel's threads, as are the futile, by and large, attempts to quit smoking, which the reader never forgets.
Alhierd Bakharevich. Photo: LookByMedia
But the main thing, after all, is that the people who invented the Program knew "how easy it is to hook us with doubt..." I will, however, quote this passage in full:
"Somewhere in the city of Minsk, Snow White slept (this is what the main character calls his antipode, his copy, his "substitute") — having cast a net of madness over Europe, poisoning you with his terrible dream, dragging us with you into the dark absurdity of his victory. Perhaps without realizing it himself, he led us to ruin — and we could not but follow him. Those who devised all this knew how easy it was to hook us with doubt, us, the disillusioned and the weak. The poet, who even without any programs every day sought justification for her existence within herself, and the wild-eyed freak tour guide, who earned money with legends about a long-dead city that no one needed. We were ideal targets for the Program — because we ourselves did not believe that we were living our real lives, but rather stories invented by us."
The discussion is about doubt in the existence of a nation. The Belarusian nation. When Masherau closed all Belarusian urban schools, when Lukashenka orchestrated an absurd provocation with symbols, and eventually destroyed the peasantry as a class, the village, where, within my memory, the Belarusian language still lived, it no longer lives anywhere today. The suffering with Belarusian education for one child (one!) in all of Mahilioŭ, or the story about a Minsk kindergarten (this is already from the novel), where the only child who speaks Belarusian is diagnosed with developmental delay... What else is needed to consider a national fiasco? Of course, it is man-made, created by certain pro-Moscow, or even simply Moscow leaders — and this is the madness that Minsk and the entire large Belarusian diaspora must suffer from. This is a disease that none of the neighboring nations suffer from. This is a disease of non-presence. In theory, this man-made nature should have caused mass resistance, at least in emigration. Any other nation would have reacted this way. But not Belarusians.
Bakharevich feels this with his heart, deeply, convincingly.
Indeed, what trouble can come from that Russian Snow White if he is not integrated into the system? If he is integrated, called the mainstream, the "Savior," supported by OMON and GUBOPiK (special police units), by weapons — then it's a different matter.
The problem is not in origin; the problem is elsewhere — in the subconscious feeling of national belonging and in the human nature's yearning for freedom. By feeling, a continuation of the theme once raised by Maksim Harecki in his novel "Two Souls" is tangible:
"— Truly, with both this and that motive (referring to "The Internationale." — S.D.), I equally imagine that which is tragic and absurd for us, the reborn Belarusians: that people alien to us, not noticing their own national saturation yet to be shed, came to us with "The Internationale" only on their lips, with only its fiction in their minds, and with fanatical mercilessness set about making the Belarusian nation mere fertilizer for the cultivation of their fiction of internationalism. Oh, may they be cursed! — she cried out in an agitated voice, with sorrow. — They want to make the marks of their nationality into internationalism for us — well, thank you for the favor... Perhaps we can enter the international as equals with everyone, without this additional form of development!"
One simply needs to imagine this period of time — 100 years — and see the Belarusian idea itself, whether it has changed during this time and how we ourselves imagine it, what threatens it and how we can save it, in what we are certain and in what we are not, and finally — to remove ourselves from the hook of doubt.