At first, Jack thought her absence owed itself to the prickly argument they’d had on the last night she saw him, but then it struck him that she was not the kind of woman to abandon a patient over such a trivial matter. Also, the rumor had spread in the ward that, in the clashes that broke out after the strike, many of the agitators who had been sent to the prison camps had been injured, and Natasha Lobanova had traveled there to assist them. At any rate, Jack worried, because he needed her to discharge him from the hospital.
As for his wound, it was improving a little each day. The pain was no longer constant, and though he limped badly, he’d begun to walk with the help of crutches. He spent the mornings doing rehabilitation exercises and hobbling around the little courtyard garden to which he had access. After lunch, they changed his dressing; then he used the rest of the afternoon to study some of the Bolshevik books they had in the library—he guessed that, the more he knew about his enemies, the easier it would be to profit from them. The last work he’d looked through was entitled “Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” an essay by Lenin, the father of the October Revolution, which he’d found tremendously unsettling. It advocated the abolition of all private property, which would come into the possession of the state on behalf of all workers.
Jack thought it over for a while, reaching the conclusion that the idea was madness. It might’ve been an improvement on a medieval society like the Russia of old, when the landed gentry treated their workers like slaves, but that certainly wasn’t the situation in the United States. The Depression would end there, and America would once again be a rich country full of opportunity, where any enthusiastic entrepreneur with two cents in his pocket could build an empire with hard work and daring. And clearly, anyone in his right mind would consider it an injustice if the state then came along and snatched everything that enterprising individual had worked for.
He imagined himself returning to America, his pockets full, to open a repair shop that in time he could expand into a chain of stores. It was just a dream, of course, but dreaming was one of the few things a man could do in the Soviet Union.
He also read a worn volume on the idea of equality between men and women, penned by Lenin and entitled The Emancipation of Women, and he was deeply affected by it. It was the first time he had thought about the subject. Women were women, and they seemed happy with their role as mothers and wives. And it wasn’t that he was opposed to women working outside of the home: in the United States, they worked as cleaners, secretaries, telephone operators, teachers . . . and these seemed like occupations right for them. What he had never considered was the possibility that women could work effectively as miners, train drivers, aviators, or hospital directors. Yet in Russia, people like Natasha Lobanova, or the large female contingent doing the same jobs with identical salaries as the male operatives at the Avtozavod, proved that it was possible. Seeing the results, not only did Jack agree with Lenin that women should have the same rights as men, but he was also surprised at how quickly and effectively the Soviets had popularized a set of principles that, despite their obvious fairness, had never been adopted in any other country.
He was aware that any knowledge he could acquire might one day get him out of trouble. He asked for paper and a pencil, and devoted himself to writing notes on all of the topics that captured his attention, including those he took issue with. The list grew, as did his interest in some aspects of the revolution.
The last book that fell into his hands was a transcript of Lenin’s lecture at the Sverdlov University, in which he analyzed the power relations that had shaped the development of societies through history.
He read reluctantly. Jack had never been interested in history: the past was the past. In fact, all he remembered from his time at school was that the United States had been formed on July 4, 1776, and that after the Civil War, slavery had been abolished. However, Lenin’s lecture described situations he’d never considered before, such as the fact that, regardless of the historical era or type of government in question, the people or class in power had always exercised that power for their own benefit.
Though he found his reading stimulating, Natasha’s continued absence worried him.
It wasn’t until a week later that the doctor finally appeared, her blond braids knotted on top of her head and her fatigue visible on her face. The young woman barely returned Jack’s greeting when she removed the bandage from his hip. She just checked that the hole made by the burn was continuing to close. Jack assumed her silence was because of the argument they’d had the last time they saw each other. He apologized for it.
“Don’t worry. It’s not you. I’m just exhausted. The burn’s healing well, and there’re no signs of infection. How are you feeling?”
“Much better. The pain’s almost gone, and I’m walking without crutches now,” he lied.
“I bet you can’t wait to be back on your feet.” Jack let her put her arms around him to finish bandaging his hip. “Good.” She moved away when the dressing was done. “Tomorrow morning I’ll sign you out. I’ll prescribe some exercises that’ll help you regain your strength.”
“Wait. Don’t go yet. I wanted to ask you . . .”
“Yes?”
“It’s about these books.” He showed them to her. “I’ve been reading, and to be fair, some of it makes sense.”
“Now, that is an improvement.”
“Still, there’re some aspects I don’t understand. Lenin says there was a time when kings, emperors, tyrants, bishops, nobles, and dictators conspired to increase their wealth at the expense of their subjects, but he says those days ended with the French Revolution.”
Jack’s words seemed to soothe Natasha, her weary face relaxing. “That’s right. Until then, the people were prisoners of their own ignorance, but Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert created the Encyclopédie, a compendium of knowledge that challenged the political and religious authorities, and which, along with Descartes’s treatises, was the spark that ignited a people sick of poverty and oppression.”
“Yes, that’s what he says. For the first time, the masses united and overthrew the enslavers who’d tyrannized them, and took possession of their own destiny. Yet, how is it, after such a great victory, that the tyrants came to rule the world again?”
“Because of ambition and greed, Jack. Like germs, the exploiters regrouped. They grew, they manipulated, and they flourished; the Industrial Revolution was their ideal breeding ground. And like germs, they infected society in the guise of the bourgeoisie, building factories, monopolies, and banks, the ultimate purpose of which was to seize power and wealth again, while the rest of humanity was enslaved once more. States, even those that called themselves democracies, became the perfect vehicle to support and maintain the obscene balance of power: everything for a few, and nothing for the rest. Sad, isn’t it?”