Monday Starts on Saturday

Book 139: S.F. MASTERWORKS

by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Adam Roberts

Genres: Fantasy; Satire; Science Fiction

Synopsis

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business.

And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

INTRODUCTION

by Adam Roberts

Every now and then one chances upon a novel, little known in the West, that deserves to sell more copies than Cookery. Monday Starts on Saturday is one such novel.

As to why it is so little known in Anglophone territories, I’m not sure I can understand. It is probably true that the Strugatsky brothers are best known in the West for their great SF novel Roadside Picnic (1971), made into the almost unbearably powerful film Stalker (1979) by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. That film has perhaps overlaid Western perceptions of the sort of books the Strugatskys wrote. In fact the original Roadside Picnic novel is considerably more varied and perky than Tarkovsky’s cinematic masterpiece; and (in fact) that’s true of all the novels written by these two giants of Russian science fiction. Their output was large and varied, but at all times they were always inventive, charming, thought-provoking and wonderful writers. And Monday Starts on Saturday, quite apart from being an ingenious and gripping read, is simply a delight from start to finish. Some novels provoke admiration, some a cooler and more distanced respect. This is a novel with which to fall in love.

Sasha is a young computer programmer from Soviet Leningrad, driving north to meet up with friends for a tour of unspoiled nature of the Karelia region (that place where Russia borders on Sweden and Finland). The novel was written in the mid-1960s, when computers were brand new, and the size of a small house. So Sasha’s job is rather more cutting edge and high-tech than is implied by the term nowadays. He picks up two hitchhikers, who persuade him to take a job at the ‘Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry’ where they work (there’s a joke in the original language here: this name is abbreviated to ‘NiiChaVo’, which sounds like Hичnyero, Russian for ‘it doesn’t matter!’ or ‘don’t mention it!’). After initial reluctance, Sasha agrees. He goes on to have a series of brilliant, wrong-footing and often hilarious adventures.

The Institute utilises and researches magic, treated here as a peculiar and unpredictable branch of science. Much of the humour depends upon the way the authors combine a well-observed portrayal of a typically academic community with the sort of magical characters and artefacts found in myth and Russian folk tale.

They knew whereof they spoke. At the time of writing Monday Starts on Saturday Boris was still working as an academic astronomer and computer engineer when writing this novel (he became a full-time writer in 1966), and Arkady’s linguistic training meant he had a great deal of experience of working for large, Soviet-era organisations. However colourful and inventive the magical elements of this story, it is its profound understanding of how these sorts of human organisations function that makes the novel so vivid. ‘Function’ isn’t really the right word, actually. The Institute at Solovets is gloriously, colourfully and perfectly believably dysfunctional. The universe they are there to study is Infinite; the proper study of such a thing would require infinite time. In such a circumstance, it would make no odds whether they work or don’t work, except that working would have the side-effect of increasing the entropy of the cosmos. So they do no productive work. Most universities today follow a similar, if unacknowledged, logic.

Comparisons are sometimes made between this novel and the Harry Potter books. The parallels are certainly clear: both are comically inventive accounts of a group of people studying magic at an official establishment located in the north. I suppose it is possible Rowling was aware of the Strugatsky brothers’ prior novel, but it must be conceded that the flavour of this novel is quite different to the Potter books. For Rowling’s characters, magic is a coherent system: complex, but graspable and taken very seriously by those who study it. For the Strugatskys magic is far stranger and more random, although equally delightful. The gigantic talking pike that grants wishes, the mermaid in the tree, the cat who can remember only the beginning of stories, the magic coin that returns to your pocket when you spend it (but not if you accidentally drop it), the sofa that can interpret dreams, the motorcycle that can zoom its rider into the imagined futures of science fiction – it’s all superbly inventive and charming and imaginative. But it is also written in a way that deliberately wrong-foots the reader’s expectation, more P K Dick than J K Rowling. Portions of the novel remind me a little of Pratchett; for the Strugatskys’ many colourful wizards, vampires and officers, pompous or officious or simply strange, read rather like Discworld characters. But, again, Pratchett is in the business of providing coherent storylines and an identifiable ethical through-line in his novels. The Strugatskys don’t really see the world that way, and their novel is more morally open-ended, more episodic. In short Monday Starts on Saturday is profoundly, beautifully left-field. It’s so left field it pretty much passes out of the field altogether and reemerges, unexpectedly, right.

The Institute attempts to investigate Magic scientifically; but it is in the nature of magic, as this novel conceives it, to resist all modes of systematisation. Accordingly we might want to read the book as a satire on scientific hubris, or more specifically upon science as it was practised in the Soviet Union. One major character in the novel, Amvrosiy Ambroisovich Vybegallo, is based loosely on the infamous Soviet ‘scientist’ (the inverted commas are used advisedly) Trofim Lysenko; and Vybegallo’s grandiose and disastrous experiments are hilariously described here. But calling the novel ‘a satire on science’ makes it sound much drier and less palatable than it actually is. I prefer to read it as an exploration of the place of magic in humanity’s myths and stories.

It’s hard to deny that magic is the default mode of human storytelling. All the old myths and poems contain transcendent, magical powers and transitions; medieval Romance and Epic are full of fantastical and miraculous things. It’s not until the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries that a mode of storytelling (we sometimes call it ‘Realism’) arose in which nothing magical happened, and verisimilitude became the watchword. I’ve nothing against Realist novels, as it happens; I just think we need to acknowledge that they are the aberration in the larger context of humanity’s appetite for stories.

Monday Starts on Saturday is a novel about magic, but it is not like other books about magic. One feature shared by pretty much all narratives predicated upon ‘magic’ is that the magic has rules. This is because ‘magical thinking’ has rules – psychological rules, that is. ‘Magical thinking’ is that near ubiquitous human state of mind at work in superstition, ritual, prayer and religion as well as obsessive-compulsive behaviours, that there is a causal relationship between human actions and beliefs and cosmic eventuality. I wonder what it would be like to write a Fantasy novel in which the magic has no rules at all. That would be bracing, and might bring out this buried truth: millions who think they love Fantasy because of the magic actually love it because of the rules.

Monday Starts on Saturday isn’t quite that novel, but it comes closer than any other I can think of. The Strugatskys’ understand that, for most people, science and magic are not opposite terms, since for most people ‘science’ is now so complex and specialised, so incomprehensible, and capable of being translated into such technological marvelousness, that it is in effect a mode of magic. Not one person in a hundred million really understands what goes on inside their iPhone. The scientific publications of the Academy might as well be alchemical gobbledegook, or indeed fairy stories, as far as the woman, or man, on the Clapham Omnibus are concerned.

This in turn has a strange consequence, something this marvellous novel understands on a deep level. We talk about ‘real magic’ to distinguish it from ‘stage magic’, which, as illusion, is of course not magic at all. It’s a ‘false magic’. But the irony here is that real magic is the kind of magic that can’t actually be done; where the ‘unreal’ stage magic is the kind that can actually be performed. This is a nice irony, but it’s more than that. It’s symptomatic of the way performance – under which rubric we might include stage, screen, book, song – upends the logic of actuality. This curious paradox is at the heart of this superlative novel. If magic were ‘real’, it would insert itself into the logic of the stage, of performance and theatrical companies, or people bickering and scheming and looking for the main chance. But if magic is unreal, not a part of the real world, then it retreats to the logic of dreams, wish-fulfilment and psychological fantasy. And where else does this exercise in imaginative creation take us?

CHAPTER 1

Teacher: Children, write down the sentence:‘The fish sat on the tree.’Pupil: But do fish really sit on trees?Teacher: Well … This fish was crazy.

A school joke

I was nearing my destination. On both sides the green forest pressed right up against the road, giving way now and then to clearings overgrown with yellow sedge. The sun had been trying in vain to set for hours and still hung low over the horizon. As the car trundled along the crunching gravel surface of the narrow road, I steered the wheels over the large stones, and every time the empty petrol cans in the boot clanged and clattered.

Two figures emerged from the forest on the right, stepped out on to the edge of the road and halted, looking in my direction. One of them raised his hand. I eased off on the accelerator as I examined them. They looked to me like hunters, young men, perhaps a little older than me. I liked the look of their faces and I stopped. The one who had raised his hand stuck his swarthy, hook-nosed face into the car and asked with a smile: ‘Could you give us a lift to Solovets?’

The other one, who had a ginger beard but no moustache, peeped over his shoulder, also smiling. They were definitely nice people.

‘Get in,’ I said. ‘One in the front and the other in the back – the back seat’s pretty cluttered.’

‘Our guardian angel!’ the hook-nosed one exclaimed delightedly, slipping his gun off his shoulder and getting into the seat beside me.

The one with the beard glanced in uncertainly through the rear door and said: ‘Do you mind if I just …?’

I leaned over the back of my seat and helped him clear the space that was occupied by the sleeping bag and folded tent. He sat down cautiously, setting his hunting gun between his knees.

‘Make sure you close the door properly,’ I said.

So far everything seemed normal. The car moved off. The young man with the hooked nose turned to face the back and started talking boisterously about how much nicer it was to ride in a car than to walk. The young man with the beard mumbled his agreement and kept trying to slam the door shut.

‘Pull in your cape,’ I advised him, looking through the rear-view mirror. ‘Your cape’s jamming it.’

Five minutes later everything was all sorted out. ‘About ten kilometres to Solovets, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ replied the hook-nosed one. ‘Or maybe a bit more. Only the road’s not so good, of course – it’s just for trucks.’

‘The road’s just fine,’ I retorted. ‘I was told I wouldn’t be able to get through at all.’

‘You can get down this road even in autumn.’

‘Here, maybe, but from Korobets on it’s a dirt track.’

‘It’s a dry summer this year, everything’s dried out a bit.’

‘They say there’s rain up around Zaton,’ remarked the bearded young man on the back seat.

‘Who says?’ asked the hook-nosed one.

‘Merlin says.’ And for some reason they laughed.

I took out my cigarettes, lit up and passed them round.

‘The Clara Zetkin Plant,’ said the hook-nosed one, eyeing the pack. ‘Are you from Leningrad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Doing a bit of travelling?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Are you local?’

‘Born and bred,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘I’m from Murmansk,’ declared the bearded one.

‘I suppose from Leningrad there’s no difference between Solovets and Murmansk – it’s all the North,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘No, not at all,’ I said politely.

‘Will you be staying in Solovets?’ asked the hook-nosed one.

‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘Solovets is where I’m headed.’

‘Have you got family or friends there?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m just going to wait for some guys. They’re walking along the coast, and we arranged to meet up in Solovets.’

I spotted a large patch of rocks ahead, braked and said: ‘Hold on tight.’ The car started shuddering and shaking. The young man in the front hit his hooked nose against the barrel of his gun. The motor roared and stones smashed against the bottom of the car.

‘Your poor car,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘Can’t be helped …’ I said.

‘Not everyone would drive down a road like this in their own car.’

‘I would,’ I said. The patch of large rocks came to an end.

‘So, it’s not your car then,’ the hook-nosed one deduced.

‘Where would I get a car from? It’s on hire.’

‘I see,’ said the hook-nosed young man, and I thought he sounded disappointed. I was stung to respond.

‘What’s the point of buying a car for driving around on asphalt? The places covered in asphalt aren’t interesting, and in the interesting places there isn’t any asphalt.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Hook-nose agreed politely.

‘I think it’s stupid to turn a car into a fetish,’ I declared.

‘It is,’ said the bearded one, ‘but not everybody thinks that way.’

We talked a bit about cars and came to the conclusion that if you were going to buy anything, then it should be a GAZ-69 all-terrain model, but unfortunately they weren’t for sale.

The hook-nosed one asked: ‘Where do you work?’

I answered the question.

‘Tremendous!’ he exclaimed. ‘A programmer. A programmer’s just what we need. Listen, why don’t you leave your institute and come to work for us?’

‘And what have you got?’

‘What have we got?’ asked the one with the hooked nose, turning round to the back.

‘An Aldan-3,’ said the one with the beard.

‘A very versatile machine,’ I said. ‘And does it run okay?’

‘Well, how can I put it …’

‘I get it,’ I said.

‘Actually, they haven’t debugged it yet,’ said the bearded one. ‘If you stayed with us you could debug it …’

‘We could arrange the transfer in no time at all,’ added the hook-nosed one.

‘What’s your line of work?’ I asked.

‘Like all science,’ said the hook-nosed one, ‘our work deals with human happiness.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Something to do with space?’

‘Yes, space too,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘I’m happy enough where I am,’ I said.

‘A capital city and good pay,’ the bearded passenger muttered in a low voice, but I heard him.

‘That’s not the point,’ I said. ‘You can’t measure everything by money.’

‘I was only joking,’ said the bearded one.

‘It’s just his sense of humour,’ said the hook-nosed one. ‘You won’t find any place more interesting than here with us, though.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘I’m certain of it.’

‘But I’m not.’

The hook-nosed one laughed. ‘We’ll come back to that later,’ he said. ‘Are you going to be in Solovets for long?’

‘Two days at the most.’

‘Then we’ll talk about it the day after tomorrow’.

The bearded passenger declared: ‘Personally I see the finger of fate in this – there we are strolling through the forest and we run into a programmer. I think it’s your destiny.’

‘Do you really need a programmer that badly?’ I asked.

‘We need a programmer desperately.’

‘I’ll have a word with the guys,’ I promised. ‘I know a few who aren’t too happy.’

‘We don’t need just any old programmer,’ said the young man with the hooked nose. ‘Programmers are in short supply, they’ve got spoilt, but we need an unspoilt one.’

‘Yes, that’s a bit more difficult,’ I said.

The hook-nosed passenger started bending down his fingers as he counted: ‘We need a programmer who is (a) not spoilt; (b) keen and willing; (c) who’ll agree to live in a hostel …’

‘… And (d),’ put in the bearded one, ‘for a hundred and twenty roubles a month.’

‘Perhaps you’d like one with wings?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe with a halo round his head? That’s one in a thousand!’

‘We only need one,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘And what if there are only nine hundred?’

‘We’ll make do with nine-tenths.’

The forest opened up in front of us; we drove across a bridge and trundled on between fields of potatoes.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ said the hook-nosed one. ‘Where are you planning to spend the night?’

‘I’ll sleep in the car. How late do your shops open here?’

‘Our shops are already closed,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘You can stay in the hostel,’ said the bearded one. ‘I’ve got a spare bed in my room.’

‘You can’t drive up to the hostel,’ the hook-nosed one said pensively.

‘I suppose not,’ said the bearded one, and for some reason he laughed.

‘You could park the car by the police station,’ said the hook-nosed one.

‘This is just plain stupid,’ said the bearded one. ‘I’m talking drivel and you’re no better. How will he get to the hostel?’

‘Yeah, damn it,’ said the hook-nosed one. ‘You’re right, take one day off work and you clean forget all these little wrinkles.’

‘Maybe we could transgress him?’

‘Oh, sure,’ said the hook-nosed one. ‘He’s no divan. And you’re no Cristobal Junta, and neither am I …’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’ll sleep in the car. I’ve done it before.’

But I suddenly felt a terrible longing to sleep between sheets. I’d already spent four nights in a sleeping bag.

‘I know,’ said the hook-nosed one, ‘Oh-o! The Lohuchil!’

‘Right!’ exclaimed the bearded one. ‘We’ll take him to the curving seashore!’

‘Honestly, I can sleep in the car,’ I said.

‘You’re going to sleep in a house,’ said the hook-nosed one, ‘in more or less clean sheets. We have to thank you somehow …’

‘We can’t just slip you fifty kopecks,’ said the bearded one.

We drove into the town, with its lines of sturdy old fences and massive timber houses built out of gigantic blackened logs, with carved lintels round the narrow windows and wooden cockerels on their roofs. We passed a few dirty brick buildings with metal doors, and at the sight of them my memory threw up the half-forgotten word ‘emporium’. The street was straight and wide and it was called Peace Prospect. Ahead of us, closer to the centre, we could see two-storey breeze-block buildings with small open gardens.

‘The next side street on the right,’ said the hook-nosed one.

I indicated, braked and turned right. The roadway here was overgrown with grass, but there was a brand-new Zaporozhets car nestling against one gate. The numbers of the houses hung above the gateways, the figures barely discernible on the rusty tin-plate signs. The alley bore the elegant name of Curving Seashore Street, but its narrow passage was squeezed in between massive old fences that had probably been erected in the days when Swedish and Norwegian pirates roamed these parts.

‘Stop,’ said the hook-nosed passenger. I braked sharply and he banged his nose against the barrel of his gun again. ‘Right, then,’ he said, rubbing his nose. ‘You wait for me while I go and arrange everything.’

‘Really, there’s no need,’ I said one last time.

‘No arguments. Volodya, you keep a close eye on him.’

The young man with the hooked nose got out of the car, hunched over and squeezed in through the low wicket gate. I couldn’t see the house behind the towering grey fence. The gates were absolutely immense, like the gates of a railway depot, with rusty iron hinges that must have weighed 16 kilograms apiece. I was astonished when I read the signs, of which there were three. On the left-hand gate there was a respectable-looking blue sign with silver letters glinting behind thick glass:



Hanging on the right-hand gate was a rusty tin plate with the legend ‘13, Curving Seashore Street, N.K. Gorynich’, and below it was a quaint piece of plywood with a crooked, sprawling inscription in ink:



‘What CAT’s that?’ I asked. ‘The Committee for Advanced Technology?’

The young man with the beard chuckled.

‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ he said. ‘This is a funny old place, but everything will be just fine.’

I got out of the car and started wiping the windscreen. Suddenly I heard a commotion above my head. I glanced up. Settling down on the gate and trying to make himself comfortable, was a gigantic cat – I’d never seen one like it – a black and grey tabby. When he finally settled down, he peered at me with his well-fed, indifferent, yellow eyes. ‘Puss-puss-puss,’ I said automatically. The cat opened its sharp-toothed jaws with polite indifference, made a hoarse, throaty sound, then turned and began looking back into the yard, beyond the fence, from where I heard my hook-nosed passenger’s voice say:

‘Vasily, my friend, I’m sorry to trouble you.’

The bolt began to squeak. The cat stood up and vanished into the yard without a sound. The gates swayed ponderously, creaking and groaning in a quite terrifying manner, and the left-hand gate slowly swung open to reveal the young man with the hooked nose, red-faced from the effort.

‘Guardian angel!’ he called to me. ‘Please drive in!’

I got back into the car and drove slowly into the spacious yard. Standing at the back of it was a house built of thick logs, and standing in front of that was a low, handsome oak tree with an immensely thick trunk and a broad, dense crown that hid the roof of the house from view. Running from the gates to the house, skirting the oak tree, was a path of flag stones. On the right of the path was a vegetable garden, and on the left, rising up in the middle of a plot of grass, stood a log well house with a windlass, all black with age and covered with moss.

I parked the car off to the side, turned off the engine and climbed out. Bearded Volodya also climbed out, set his gun against the side of the car and began settling his rucksack on his shoulders.

‘So now you’re home,’ he said.

The young man with the hooked nose closed the gates with a creak and a groan. I looked around, feeling rather awkward and not knowing what to do.

‘And here’s the lady of the house!’ Volodya exclaimed: ‘Good health to you, Naina Kievna!’

My hostess must have been over a hundred years old. She walked towards us slowly, leaning on a knotty stick, shuffling along on feet clad in felt boots with rubber galoshes. Her face was dark-brown: from the centre of a solid mass of wrinkles her nose protruded out and down, as crooked and sharp as a Turkish dagger, and her eyes were pale and dull, as if they were covered by cataracts.

‘Welcome, welcome, little grandson,’ she said in a surprisingly resonant bass. ‘So he’s going to be the new programmer? Welcome, dear guest, welcome indeed!’ I bowed, realising that I should keep quiet. Over the fluffy black shawl knotted under her chin, the old granny’s head was covered by a cheerful nylon scarf with brightly coloured pictures of the Atomium and an inscription in several languages: ‘Brussels International Exhibition.’ Her chin and upper lip had a sparse covering of coarse, grey stubble. She was wearing a sleeveless padded vest and a black woollen dress.

‘It’s like this, Nina Kievna!’ said the young man with the hooked nose, brushing the rust off his hands as he walked towards her. ‘We have to put our new colleague up for two nights. Allow me to introduce … mmm …’

‘Don’t bother,’ said the old woman, looking me over closely. ‘I can see for myself.’ And she ran through the answers to the standard employment questionnaire: ‘Alexander Ivanovich Privalov, born nineteen thirty-eight, male, Russian, member of the Leninist Komsomol, none, no, never joined, never has, none – but you, my treasure, shall travel a distant road and do business in a public place, and you should beware, my precious, of a wicked man with red hair, come, cross my palm with gold, my darling one …’

‘Hm-hmm!’ the hook-nosed young man said loudly, and the old woman stopped short. An awkward silence set in.

‘You can call me Sasha …’ I managed to force out the phrase I’d prepared in advance.

‘And where am I going to put him?’ the old granny inquired.

‘In the storeroom, of course,’ said the hook-nosed you. . .