"Underground Passages" by Bakharevich — a novel that un-hooks doubt

Alhierd Bakharevich wrote the novel "Underground Passages" — about the transformation of a Belarusian emigrant into a Belarusian Berliner. The cult phrase by John F. Kennedy, "Ich bin ein Berliner," could serve as an epigraph here; it is repeated by the main character, who eventually settles in a house where the "mentally close" Franz Kafka once lived.

The plot is as follows: a Minsk tour guide and his poetess wife emigrated in 2020. Now, Russians who arrived from somewhere beyond the Urals under a Program live in their Minsk apartment. They have been assigned the names of the previous residents, the "fled ones," and must "correctly" live out their lives. The Russian is depicted in the novel as a Soviet man, born with the awareness that he is here to save; he is a savior, a liberator, he is the "Savior." In telephone conversations with the Berliner exile, this "Savior" skillfully triumphs, even inclining the Berliner towards thoughts of suicide. His job is also fitting: 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 establish good relations, aiming for peace and harmony in everything, almost friendship, so that everything is "all in order."

The book reads in one breath; it brings to mind Bakharevich's novel "Alindarka's Children" with a similar theme, and also "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, expressing their understanding of events. In total (over a year), there are 365 works there (https://docs.rferl.org/be-BY/2014/05/07/3a8b68fe-51c2-4143-8161-84680b9bdf2d.pdf). This experience with stories, where intrigue is encrypted, probably came in handy for 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, en masse, are ready to accept lies as their "correct" choice ("after all, everything is good and we are happy in Belarus, everyone speaks Russian here").

Sometimes it seems that people have simply grown accustomed to the regime, to dangers, to lies, and begin to tolerate or not even notice them. The Russian who arrived under the Program (and has already received a Belarusian passport) also constantly "expounds" on this. Even the German colleagues of our emigrants speak of it as something insignificant. And here, a void is formed — in the place of freedom.

The lies of the system, the lies of elections, the lies of courts, the lies of television, the lies of schools... This is a great, state-sponsored lie, protected by the army, police, and KGB...

There are also small lies, which are sometimes not so easy to discern. For example, the lie of talents-no-talents in literature. And there, in German salons, they talk about this, about talentless performers before an audience who endlessly repeat the same words and are paid for it, who can live off it. That's why emigrants travel from city to city for such meetings-gigs. Meanwhile, their own German poets from the town of Okerlo (this is discussed in a separate chapter) have no such opportunities, because they do not "sell" dictatorship, repression, and prisons, which do not exist in Germany, and what they do have and "sell" has no demand.

But this, though important, is still one of many parallel storylines in the novel. For instance, we constantly remember and feel that the author turned 50, and this (the experience of aging) is also one of the threads of the novel, as are the ultimately futile attempts to quit smoking, which the reader never forgets.

Павялічыць

But the main thing, after all, is that the people who devised the Program knew "how easy it is to put us on the hook of doubt"... I will, however, quote this entirely:

"Somewhere in the city of Minsk, Snow White (this is how the main character refers to his antipode, his copy, his 'substitute') slept — spreading a web of madness over Europe, poisoning you with his terrible dream, dragging us into the dark absurdity of his victory. Perhaps without even realizing it, he led us to destruction — and we could not but follow him. Those who invented all this knew how easy it was to put us, the disbelieving and weak, on the hook of doubt. The poetess, who even without any programs searched within herself daily for justification for her existence, and the somewhat wild 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."

This refers to doubt in the existence of the nation. The Belarusian nation. When Masherau closed all Belarusian urban schools, when Lukashenka orchestrated a senseless provocation with symbols, and finally destroyed the peasantry as a class, the village, where, even within my memory, the Belarusian language lived, today it lives nowhere. The struggles with Belarusian education for a single child (one!) in all of Mogilev, or the story of a Minsk kindergarten (this is from the novel), where the only child who speaks Belarusian is diagnosed with developmental delay... What more is needed to contemplate national fiasco? Of course, it is man-made, created by certain pro-Moscow, or even simply Moscow-appointed, leaders — this is the madness that Minsk and the entire vast 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, its man-made nature should provoke mass resistance, at least among the emigration. Any other nation would react that way. But not Belarusians.

Bakharevich feels this with his heart, deeply, convincingly.

Indeed, what harm is there from that Russian "Snow White" if he is not integrated into the system? If he is integrated, named a mainstream figure, the "Savior," supported by AMAP (OMON) and GUBOPiK (GUBOPIK), with weapons — then that's a different matter.

The problem is not in origin; the problem is elsewhere — in the subconscious feeling of national belonging and in human nature's yearning for freedom. Based on these feelings, one senses a continuation of the theme once raised by Maksim Haretski in the novel "Two Souls":

"— Truly, with both this and that motive (referring to 'The Internationale'. — S.D.), I equally perceive the tragic and absurd situation for us, the reborn Belarusians: that people foreign to us, not noticing their own undispelled national saturation, came to us with 'The Internationale' only on their lips, with only its fiction in their minds, and with fanatical mercilessness began to turn the Belarusian nation into mere fertilizer for the beds to cultivate their fiction of 'The Internationale'. Oh, may they be cursed! — she cried out in an agitated voice, filled with sorrow. — They want to make the marks of their nationality into 'The Internationale' for us — so thanks for the favor... Perhaps we can enter 'The Internationale' 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, how we ourselves envision it, what threatens it, and how we can save it, what we are certain of and what we are not, and finally — to take ourselves off the hook of doubt.

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