out like the ritual items of a shaman of the city.
But it was the collection of art that made the room extraordinary. In plain dark frames, squeezed in between the bookshelves, hung in corners and high up near the ceiling, the paintings were like none Lom had seen before. They were of shapes and colours only. Sharp angular quadrilaterals of red and blue and green, smashed against a background of dark grey that reminded him of city buildings at twilight, but falling. Collapsing. Black lines slashed across jumbled boxes of faded terracotta. Thick, unfinished scrapes of paint – midnight blue – burnt earth – colours of rain and steel. Mad, childish clouds and curlicues and watery rivers of purple and gold and acidic, medicinal green. As Lom looked he began to see that there were objects in them – sometimes – or at least suggestions of objects. Bits and pieces of objects. A bicycle wheel. A bottle-cork. A bridge reflected in a river, exploded by sunset. A horse. The spout of a jug. Sometimes there was writing – typographic fragments, scrawled vowels, tumbled alphabets, but never a whole word.
Vishnik was sitting at the desk nursing a glass. He looked thin, almost gaunt. His hands were still trembling, but his eyes were warmer now, filled with the dark familiar ardour, missing nothing. It was the same clear serious face, illuminated with an intense intelligence. There was something wild and sad there, which hadn’t been there when they were young. But this was Raku Vishnik still.
‘You gave me a fright, my friend,’ Vishnik was saying. ‘I was ungracious. I apologise. I spend too much time alone these days. One becomes a little strung out, shall we say.’
‘What about your work?’ said Lom. ‘The university.’
Lom had gone with Vishnik to see him onto the boat, the day he left Podchornok for Mirgorod. Vishnik was going to study history at the university, while Lom was to stay in Podchornok and join the police. Vishnik had dressed flamboyantly then. Wide-brimmed hats and bright bow ties. The fringe longer and floppier. They’d exchanged letters full of cleverness and joking and the futures that awaited them both in their chosen professions. Vishnik was going to become a professor, and he had. But the correspondence dwindled over the years and finally stopped. Lom had settled into the routine of the Provinciate Investigations Department.
‘The university?’ said Vishnik. ‘Ah. Now they, they are fuckers. They don’t let me teach any more. My background became known. My family. Someone let the bloody secret out. Aristocrats. Nobility. Former persons. Some of the darling students complained. And then of course there was the matter of my connections with the artists. The poets. The cabaret clubs. I used to write about all that. Did you know? Of course not. Criticism. Essays. Journalism. The magazines could never afford to pay me, but sometimes they gave me a painting.’ He waved clumsily at the walls. ‘But that’s all over. It appears I became an embarrassment to the authorities. The hardliners run the show now, on matters of aesthetics like everything else. These pictures are degenerate. Fuck. They closed the galleries and the magazines. The painters are forbidden to paint. They still do, of course. But it’s dangerous now. And I am silenced. Forbidden to publish. Forbidden to teach.’
He emptied his glass and filled it again. Poured one for Lom.
‘That’s tough,’ said Lom. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was lucky. Not completely cast into the outermost darkness. I think some of my fucker colleagues did have the grace to feel a little ashamed. They have made me the official historian of Mirgorod, no less. In that august capacity I sit here before you now. There’s even a small stipend. I can afford to eat. Not that anyone wants a history of Mirgorod. I doubt it will ever be published. I’m not spoken to, Vissarion, not any more. And I’m watched. I’m on the list. My time will come. I thought it had, when you came banging at the fucking door. They always come in the night. Never the fucking morning. Never fucking lunchtime. Always the fucking middle of the fucking night.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think—’
‘Fuck it. Fuck them, Vissarion. Tell me that you haven’t changed.’
‘I haven’t changed.’
Vishnik raised his glass.
‘To friendship, then. Welcome to Mirgorod.’
Archangel studies his planet, his prison, his cage. He assembles the fragments, the minds he has sifted and collected, and comes to understand it better. The planet has a history, and history is a voice. The