Uncertain Weights and Measures Read online

  Tsiolkovsky and Segalin had been colleagues for many years, so it was natural that it was Tsiolkovsky who took a seat at the table next to him, a move that in other circumstances might have seemed aggressive but which had judged Segalin appropriately: he quieted.

  Bekhterev had been absent that morning on account of his role on the Medical Advisory Committee to the Kremlin. He had been on the committee ever since Lenin’s first stroke, and his being called there that day seemed only further evidence that whatever problems he might have experienced with the Party were behind him.

  In the afternoon, Bekhterev was slated to deliver a lecture to the entire Congress, a lecture in which he planned to definitively address the erroneous thinking of the pedologists and psychologists about human personality. But he was late. Late, therefore, for the People’s Commissar for Health, Nikolai Semashko, who had been standing awkwardly to the side of the podium, a small box in his hands that was too big for a pocket and, I presumed, too valuable to be placed on a table. When Bekhterev arrived, the microphones were set, and this might have led to his excuses — intended for the few gathered at the front of the room — being captured and amplified throughout the room. He had been visiting, he said, an everyday paranoiac with a withered hand. If it weren’t for the microphones, who would have heard him?

  I remember the comment now as if it stood out in the moment, as if, when he said it, a chill went up my spine, but it is just as likely that I learned of the comment later, “remembering it” only once its significance became clear. It was widely known that the man with the withered hand was our Georgian, our Patriarch, our Stalin. That our Patriarch feared more than he ought to would also have been well known, especially among the small circle to whom Bekhterev addressed the comment. Less widely known — and completely unknown to me at the time — was the kind of damage such an “everyday paranoiac” could inflict.

  Though the sound of Bekhterev’s amplified voice served, for the most part, as a signal to the room that his talk was about to begin, it is clear now, in light of what happened afterwards, that some were listening more attentively than others.

  I sat between Segalin and Luria in one of the rows towards the front. Luria sat straight backed with one leg crossed daintily over the other. He’d cleaned his glasses and opened his notepad to a fresh page. Segalin leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, as if this were a sporting event. Segalin was old enough to be my father, and yet he seemed to be in a state of constant astonishment or trembling, as if he’d learned nothing during the course of his life that could grant him any kind of security. As for Luria, we were very close in age, yet he seemed older, as if, in contrast to Segalin, he had been born with some sense of how to play along, an intuition perhaps, that had already served to protect him in many ways. For myself, I rarely thought about what it would mean to protect myself.

  Semashko had stepped away from the podium to make room for Bekhterev. The room quieted.

  In the years to come — indeed, perhaps until my final days — I will think back to that afternoon and to the way Bekhterev addressed us. He spoke to us as comrades, as equals, as fellow seekers, as disciples who would take up his earliest questions and make of them a discipline. We would follow his footsteps, we would continue with bringing the rigour of scientific inquiry to the study of human personality, and in doing so, we would release society from the impoverished thinking that had prevented our understanding not only of the cherished people in our midst, but also of every aspect of our existence, from the smallest particles known to man to our very conception of God. He trusted us. We must correct our thinking, he told us. Reject analogy. Throw off metaphysics completely.

  In its extremes, he said, you will easily join me in identifying the problem. The Greek philosopher Protagoras taught us that man is the measure of everything. At first glance, he said, looking around the room, this seems a just statement. Until, he paused, until we ask ourselves against which touchstone such a measure could be made. Therein lies the problem. Protagoras did not imagine man with a measuring device in hand. He imagined man, himself, as the measure. This anthropocentric attitude has invaded science from philosophy, such that writers like Wundt and Espinas ascribe even complex manifestations of conscious activities such as patriotism, sense of duty, sense of property, aesthetics, love, and so on to the lowliest creatures, to ants, bees, termites, spiders, and others. Other scientifically minded individuals have cited the feeling of penitence in a Spanish mule that has been punished for disobedience — its coronal and bells given to another mule; and, conversely, a feeling of pride in the rams and bulls that wear bells and other ornaments given them as leaders of the herd.

  A few in the audience laughed.

  Outrageous as those examples may seem, do not imagine yourselves immune to this error in subtler, seemingly innocuous ways. Human thought tends to pursue a subjective direction in all questions related to the study of man, but in addition, as the examples above demonstrate, the tendency to think that what I know of myself — that I desire food, sex, drink, that I feel sadness and fear death — must apply not only to my fellow man but also to any other entity on earth that moves. Primitive peoples endow everything with a soul. But are we so much better?

  Bekhterev swayed as he spoke. Something about him seemed so free, so young, though by then he had already celebrated his seventieth birthday.

  Think of General Wolseley, he went on, who lamented that the main facts of the Battle of Waterloo, despite having been witnessed by hundreds, remain largely unknown. The English General found it distressing that we could know who were the victors and the vanquished, but beyond the main events of the battle there is only mystery. Subjective testimony — what one man saw, what another felt — is distressingly unreliable. On the other hand, objective data — the number of men wounded, killed, or taken prisoner; the amount of ammunition used by what number of guns; how and whither the vanquished withdrew — all of these calculations will give a full and objective account of the battle, such as can never be given by the subjective testimony of eyewitnesses. It is clear that, on the basis of narration alone, we shall miss the truth.

  In his conclusion, Bekhterev became wistful.

  We can, he said, looking out to us all as if wanting to speak directly to each and every one of us, only lament the wasted genius of those who devote their energy to the subjective methods. From the Pythagoreans and Platonists all the way through to Descartes, Hegel, and even Bergson, these thinkers have indulged in exploring one’s own mind or soul to discover universal laws and solutions to the great secrets of life. Today this approach can only generate feelings of sorrow and compassion — the latter because of talent squandered in the pursuit of chimeras, and the former because of all the time and work so pitifully wasted. The human mind is fundamentally incapable of answering metaphysical questions that address the origin of life and movement, the nature of matter, and the appearance of consciousness. When the human intellect turns its gaze inward, it loses itself in the turn.

  It was this point that would be so roundly refuted by our colleagues at the Congress of Pedologists and Psychologists, and it was this point that, for a moment, made me feel utterly lost. Pushed to its limit, his dismissal of analogical thinking meant accepting not only that atoms do not have souls, nor do mules feel pride, nor do plants “reach” for the sun, but also that there was no God and Sasha was a complete stranger. At the end of his speech, Semashko stood again beside Bekhterev to confer upon him the title of Honoured Scientist. It was the absolute peak of Bekhterev’s career and, for everyone gathered in that room, a moment that was thick with history and promise.

  That night, Bekhterev took his wife to the theatre. From what I have learned since, his wife insisted they go, despite Bekhterev’s reluctance. The tickets had been a gift, left with the organizers of the Congress that afternoon by a man no one recognized. I myself had brought them to the apartment where the Bekhterevs were staying and have, ever since, regretted my diligence. Swan Lake. I re
member thinking that Sasha and I should see the same show once we returned from the country. The tickets were meant as congratulations.

  Actually, I’d brought the tickets over to Bekhterev with Luria because when the organizers went looking for Bekhterev, they’d found us talking. When they asked me to take the tickets to Bekhterev, Luria asked if he could join me. He’d given a talk that afternoon that I’d missed, so as we walked he filled me in. All his work was about two kinds of people — twins and criminals — and what he studied in both was how they spoke. What he’d discovered was that criminals always give themselves up, but most people aren’t paying close enough attention to see it.

  How? I asked.

  They sweat, twitch, cross and uncross their legs.

  Maybe they’re just nervous.

  Of course they’re nervous, he said, laughing.

  I mean, I’d be nervous even if I didn’t do anything wrong.

  That’s an important distinction, said Luria. But we’re using words to figure out the difference between good nervous and evil nervous.

  Who’s the “we”?

  He never answered questions he didn’t like.

  We ask them to associate words. Like Freud does, but without the dreams. And we time how long it takes them to associate neutral words versus trigger words. When someone is guilty, said Luria, their response times become erratic. Everyone has a signature response time. You do. I do. So when a normal person gets over the initial discomfort of this kind of questioning, they settle into a pattern. Some even enjoy themselves. They enjoy the surprise of themselves, of what they come up with. Not everyone, of course, but even a generally nervous person will still settle into a pattern. If they sweat, they sweat the same amount throughout the session. But a criminal is different. They don’t trust themselves to say what they ought to. They want to respond quickly, because they think speed suggests a kind of naturalism, a comfort, but they can’t do it all the time.

  Can you give me an example? I asked.

  There was a man who’d murdered his wife. She’d been found, bleeding out in the hallway of their apartment. He tried to blame a neighbour. When we met up with him, even the top of his bald head was sweating. He kept swiping it with a kerchief, but it didn’t help. We gave him all sorts of prompts. Words like kind, cut, bread, neighbour, wife. Anything that related to the crime took him longer to respond to, and usually involved an echo. Echolalia, it’s called. It’s symptomatic in liars. Wife, wife, wife, he’d say and then focus and try to start again. He’d tell us we were barking up the wrong tree. He’d say we were asking in vain. He’d say he didn’t do it. Kind took him 6.1 seconds — a kind husband, a kind one, he’d say. When we gave him love, he said nothing.

  I thought of that man, a murderer, who had no answer for love.

  We had walked all the way down to the river and along the walkway towards the east. A couple were standing on top of the wall, the man’s back to us. The woman threw a rock so hard and so far I thought she must be aiming for the other side. The man laughed at her.

  Close, he said.

  She turned around to throw a rock at him but saw us and didn’t.

  We walked past.

  Why did you tell me about the criminals? I asked. Why not the twins?

  Because you like criminals, he said. You told me that already.

  I suppose I had.

  But that’s normal, he said. Most people like criminals.

  What he was talking about was a version of the lie detection machine he’d developed many years before. He was a man who was interested in liars, I thought, but then maybe that was the same thing as being a woman with an interest in criminals: we’re all interested.

  When we turned onto the street of Bekhterev’s Moscow apartment, I asked Luria why he’d wanted to join me.

  I have some lessons to teach you, he said. Life lessons.

  Life lessons? I scoffed. We’re the same age!

  Some people learn faster than others, he said.

  You’re ridiculous, I said.

  Bekhterev still kept a servant, so it was she who answered the door when I knocked and to her that I gave the tickets.

  Luria continued as we walked away, saying that everyone likes criminals, and most everybody likes life lessons, too.

  You want to get better, don’t you? he asked.

  What I wanted was to avoid his questions, so I asked him what he thought of Segalin’s studies, happy with myself because I’d learned a life lesson from him that I’d been able to use against him.

  There are two questions there, said Luria. No, three. Your first question is, what do I think of Segalin? The second is, what do I think about his project: can we diagnose someone based upon the stories they tell? And third, if we can, what do I make of his results?

  Okay, so all of those, I said.

  Three questions. One answer. Segalin is crazy, he said.

  But you diagnose people by their stories, I said.

  No, he said. I diagnose them by their words.

  Does this make you a good liar or a bad liar?

  I don’t lie, he said.

  So then I can trust you, I said.

  Not the same thing, he said.

  Is this one of your life lessons? I asked.

  You could say that, he said.

  Months later, when I repeated back to him what he’d said about Segalin, he looked at me as if I were the one who was nuts: Crazy? he said. I meant crazy-smart.

  What he meant was, he didn’t want to be pinned down.

  I just don’t know if all geniuses suffer pathologies like that, I said.

  Maybe they hide it.

  Bekhterev seems fine, I said.

  Maybe he hides it, said Luria.

  Maybe he just isn’t a genius.

  Maybe…

  I was joking.

  He tried to recover, tried to make like he knew I’d been joking, but we both knew he didn’t.

  I was the last person to leave the institute after Congress. In the institute’s kitchen, the frost had already begun to accumulate. In the markets, peasant women would be selling lace that replicated the patterns of frost they saw on their home windows. They called them frost flowers, but I thought they looked more like the leaves of the ferns that grow everywhere in Moscow, their feathery fronds swept up and replicated ad infinitum on panes of glass across the city. The frost diffused all light, so the lab, even though it had natural light, had lost the warmth of the fall. The institute felt so quiet and timeless, as though it were, itself, a protected space, a place that could not wither or erode,a place where everything we believed could stay intact. Like Lenin’s embalmed body in Red Square, the institute would not decay and there was no mystery in that, no miracle, no. Science had rescued us from miracles.

  Locking the door, it felt like I was sealing the institute off, protecting it from the darkest nights of the year, promising it that it would remain undisturbed until my return.

  The day after Congress, Sasha suggested we walk through the markets. The holiday season meant that the city was covered in tinsel and cheap decorations. Christmas roses, postcards, and children’s toys were everywhere. The Chinese vendors sold artificial flowers made of paper, sea monsters, and brightly patterned deep-sea fish. The peasants hawked yellow and red glass orbs to hang from the trees. The glass caught the sun’s winter light, seeming to draw it into their inner spheres, heating it up and then radiating it back out again as if they were, themselves, sources of light. Just reflections, of course. On every corner, we passed the grandmothers with baskets full of sugar figurines. They never smiled. Rotted teeth, I figured. Everywhere we went, Sasha would say that one, and that one, and that, too, as we walked past posters he had coloured: Into Production! Books! The Streets are our Brushes, The Square our Palettes!

  Sasha knew the names of the shops, their owners, and what products they sold. His favourite was owned by Michel, an old family friend. By virtue of his connection to Sasha’s family, I was immediately wary aroun
d him. Originally from a small town in France, he had come to Russia before the Revolution, married a woman from Moscow, and never left. It was more difficult now to import things from abroad, so the lavender soaps and lilac perfumes he sold cost more than we earned in months. Sasha spoke to him in French. They sang their words. When Sasha began to speak to Michel, I stopped listening and started watching. Michel stood behind a glass counter but was bent forward, his arms outstretched, so that they made a triangle underneath his head. Sasha was on the other side of the counter. His hat was in his hands and he’d unbuttoned his wool coat. His other hand was in the pocket of his coat, but he was gesturing with both hands all the same, so that the pocket of his coat on one side and his hat on the other darted out and then went slack as he talked.

  I walked around the shop but felt uneasy. The soaps and perfumes smelled like a place I didn’t belong. Rima and I had a word for such things: poshlost. When we said that word, we emphasized the harsh consonants, the p and the st, because they sounded out our judgments so decisively. Michel’s shop was full of things created for the sake of being things. There were small boxes full of note cards, vases full of plastic flowers, porcelain statues, and matryoshka dolls, a whole collection of miniature musical instruments — beguiling objects, all of them, each little bourgeois fetish more cloying than the next. When I looked at them, I saw the dust they would summon. These were objects that would sit on a shelf somewhere, telling the women to dust more, clean more, stay at home. This was a side Sasha rarely showed me, a side I had hoped he wanted to leave behind, a side of him that was his mother. I wondered how much a person could change over the course of a lifetime. A lot? Not at all?

  There was a small part of me that desired these beautiful things. Wasn’t it true that art and science and politics belonged together? Wasn’t it true that a thing of beauty was also, then, a work of art? I saw a pair of silk gloves so fine they caught the light in pools of white and silver. When I pressed my finger on each of the fine, perfect buttons, the pools of silver-white shifted, like bright mercury. The stitching was so delicate. These were things brought over from a separate world. I thought of the time and attention it had taken to make them. I inclined my head to see the pools of light flow back and forth. Surely a thing like this could be an exception. Not for me, perhaps, not for me or my friends, but for somebody, some other person. The gloves could be art.