Still, with all those women, he never met one whom he found suitable for marriage. By and by, he fell out with the idea of ever feeling love, and in his forty-seventh year, abandoned the notion, as one would call off an arduous search for a climber in the Alps after a lengthy blizzard. Sitting at the table where he ate his breakfast, he poured vodka into a glass emblazoned with a star. He made himself drunk, guzzling a funeral’s worth of the liquor. On the far wall he had hung pictures of the people who had been his family. There was his younger sister Elena, who had been killed while serving in the army, with her arm around his older brother Georg, who had been massacred at Nikolaev. Their mother had frozen the second winter Stalingrad was besieged.
He got up from his chair and went to the bathroom. Inside, the light turned from gold to gray – an optical trick. Staring into the mirror, he said:“Vadym Mikhailovich Tatarinov! That’s your name. You are forty-seven years old, Vadym Mikkhailovich. Don’t think I don’t know it because I certainly do.”
He pointed his middle finger at the reflection. His hairline was receding and his face looked hard and old even though his life’s work had been easy. He drew himself up, cocked his head.“And I’ll tell you something else. You neither love nor are beloved. How is that so? You are not misshapen, you earn double pay! Why don’t you have someone to bake you fresh bread? Hm? I’ll tell you, Mister Doctor!”
He nodded his head and pushed his finger up against the mirror, leaving a smudge when he pulled it away. His breath filled the small room with the odor of rubbing alcohol. “You have gone after love like a lecher. Is that what you are? A lecher? No! So why behave like one? You’re a doctor. A scientist!”Now he put his hands on the sink and leaned in, his eyes meeting his eyes. And that was how it happened. He gave up bedding women and redoubled his work, where he was discovering many interesting facts about the tolerances of the human body and psyche that had not been known before. Single-mindedly, he worked to devise equipment and experiments, but, as was always the case with scientific research, he never seemed to have enough funding to achieve his goals. He applied to his superiors for greater resources, invoking the security of the people’s revolution. Love, he wrote, bred unpredictability, restlessness, trouble. But if love could be dissected, understood, and controlled, then surely such knowledge would be an asset to the Politburo. They granted his request, and he had as much money to work with as would have fed forty-seven thousand mouths for a year.
By August of 1950, the doctor had made some remarkable progress. Utilizing ingenious techniques he had developed himself, he was able to predict to the minute how long a pair of lovers would remain attached to each other. His subjects came to him believing that they were participating in a study on the nature of lovemaking. After spending one night in a room appropriate for such observations, the couple would be separated and the experiments would begin.
It wasn’t a matter of deprivation or conditioning – the people truly no longer loved one another. A man and woman who had made love three times a day before arriving at Vadym Mikhailovich’s facility would never touch again when they departed. The doctor succeeded universally, the rate of “recidivism,” as it was termed in his reports, zero percent. Here was how he did it:“Yulia, I have some questions to ask you. You have a piece of scratch paper and a pencil that you may use if you would like. When you have an answer, say it aloud. I will record your answers to these questions with this machine,” he gestured toward a green metal box on the table. “Do you understand?”
She nodded.“Firstly, what is the sum of the first five prime numbers?” She worked out an answer and said it.
“Incorrect. The answer is twenty-eight.”He continued to ask her questions, her answers to which were invariably wrong. He manipulated the recording to make it sound as if Yulia had had even greater difficulty, for instance, by doubling the durations of her pauses, looping minor stutters, and so on. He then invited her fiancé Anton into the room with the green metal box.
“It is of interest to us to determine not merely the physical, animalistic connection between certain people, but also what they find mentally, that is, intellectually, attractive about each other.”Asking Anton the same questions, the doctor took notes while the young man responded correctly every time.
“This may seem awkward at first, but you must listen attentively.” The recording played.His prisoners always had food sufficient in quality and quantity – better than most of them ate outside the facility. They had hot water every other day. But Vadym Mikhailovich kept a bag of burrs always at the ready. When confronted with the apparently profound stupidity of his lover, a man became much more likely to acknowledge that perhaps this was not the person best suited for his love. Or else it was the man whose ignorant and unintelligent responses slowly repulsed his girlfriend or wife. This was the mildest method – Level 1, as the doctor referred to it. From there, it became personal, intimate, and cruel. “Yulia, think of all the men with whom you have engaged in sexual activities. The best, think of as a ten, the worst, a one. With complete honesty and a regard for the import of the scientific research we are conducting, please evaluate Anton on your scale.” Her answer was then replayed to Anton, immediately after he had evaluated Yulia on his scale. From mildly pointing out ignorance to exposing sexual inadequacy and revelations of infidelity, the doctor discovered ways to play the piercing, high notes that stung his subjects instantly, along with the low, persistent, reverberating tones that resonated in the walls and bowels. Most experiments took a week and a half to carry out.
Doctor Vadym Mikhailovich Tatarinov expanded his facility. Every day he finished the reports on twenty-five pairs – fifty people, slightly fewer than twenty thousand per year. The incredible volume demanded of him fourteen-hour days. At the end of two and a half years, he had uncoupled as many people as would inhabit a small city. All of this he put into well-worded, convenient reports that he forwarded to the Kremlin, where the Leader himself read them at and for his leisure.Sitting at the table where he ate his breakfast, the doctor poured vodka into a tall glass. He drank slowly, letting the warmth in his belly thaw him. For an hour he sat, drinking and reflecting on his work. As the experiments continued, Vadym had become increasingly convinced that the reason he could not find love earlier in his life was that he had intuitively understood what his experiments provided evidence of.
One might find a hundred rubles in the streets, he supposed. That would be quite an implausible stroke of luck, but it was possible in precisely the way that “finding” love in the streets was not, for the simple reason that while a hundred rubles was a very real thing, love could only be found when it was fabricated, conjured by the individual, or imagined by couples engaged in an unconscious conspiracy. Under the slightest scrutiny, it all gave way. Hadn’t he been able to prove that?He walked to the bathroom and, after using the toilet, looked at himself in the mirror. Bald and fattish now, his mouth permanently turned down at the corners, he could see that it would be doubtful he could have any woman but a whore.
“It’s you! Vadym Mikhailovich, you slab of tepid flesh! Well, you were right about love after all, and so maybe you can die happy now, eh?”Finishing his vodka, he got under his sheets and slept a dreamless sleep.
The next day, a technician introduced case 51.857-A/B to the doctor: Maksim Lebedevich and Vera Nikolaevna. The doctor hurried through his standard, mendacious explanation of the experiment, making sure to emphasize how imperative it was that the two fully participate for the benefit of science and the future. They were not prisoners, certainly, but they could not be let go from the facility until the conclusion of the experiment. That next morning, the sessions began.
“Vera Nikholaevna, please sit,” said the doctor. He lifted a pair of reading glasses from his desk and then returned them.“I have some questions to ask you. You have a piece of scratch paper and a pencil that you may use if you would like. When you have an answer, say it aloud. I will record your answers to these questions with this machine,” he gestured toward a green metal box on the table, “Do you understand?”
“Yes, doctor.”“Firstly, what is the sum of the first five prime numbers?” She said the prime numbers aloud, keeping place with her fingers, adding as she went along. She gave her answer.
“Correct,” Vadym declared. She proceeded to respond correctly to all but two of the questions.“You are a bright woman, so I will tell you more of our purpose. We must find the precise thing that causes love so that we can implement our findings in such a way as to improve the lives of the people. Traditional methods of finding love are inefficient and do not suit the pace of progress that must be made over the next five years.” Very little of what he said was true, naturally, but misdirection had proven to be a very effective way of handling his more intelligent subjects. Vadym Mikhailovich called Maksim Lebedevich in and asked him the same series of questions, then replayed Vera’s responses.
“Doesn’t she have a voice like a cool stream? Imagine swimming naked in that voice!” said Maksim, delighted at hearing Vera’s voice.“You misunderstand the point of this exercise. Do you not find it curious that Vera could not give the acceleration due to gravity?”
“Haha, well. Yes, probably about as curious as she will find my inability to give the French phrase for ‘Good day, how are you?’ I would imagine,” he said with a smile. The doctor recognized that this would be a difficult case, but he was confident in his methods. He had seen worse.The days passed but the experiment drew no nearer to completion. Neither had admitted to infidelity or even having ever had sexual relations with another person. And the little foibles that were like ice picks against other couples were as feathers tickling the amusement of Vera and Maksim. Finally, the doctor decided he had to resort to more radical procedures. Technicians, posing as guards, raped Vera Nikholaevna. That afternoon Maksim was called in to see Vadym Mikhailovich.
“Doctor, we have been here nearly three weeks and I have not seen my wife since the first night. Something is not right – I do not know what, but I no longer wish to participate in this experiment, and I think I may also speak for my wife in this regard.”“Maksim Lebedevich, you must understand that you are a subject in a vital experiment, and, moreover, you are my patient. Believe me when I say I have your best interests at heart. We ask a little of you, so that the future may benefit greatly.”
“Doctor, we are neither of us foolish men. Perhaps Vera and I are simply unsuitable for your experiment – our love is not efficient or progressive or anything but what it is, and so I do not think you will find it worthwhile to study us any further. Please let us return to our lives.”“We have never found anyone unsuitable for our experiment. Sometimes it takes as long as two months to learn what we need to know,” Vadym told him. In fact, the longest case on record was twenty-two days, most of which was due to the dullness of the subject couple. Generally, cases requiring two weeks were considered nuisances. Vadym dismissed Maksim.
Vadym Mikhailovich determined that it would be necessary to gain a better understanding of the neurological responses of Vera and Maksim. Setting his technicians to work, he had an apparatus built that involved two television screens, a set of buttons, and a timing mechanism. He placed Vera and Maksim in a room together, separated by a soundproof glass partition. In front of Maksim, the doctor placed a screen with these words showing: DO YOU LOVE VERA? PRESS YES OR NO WHEN INSTRUCTED.” Vera’s screen read the same but asked if she loved Maksim. They looked through the glass at each other. The screen changed with a flash. “PRESS YES OR NO NOW.” What happened next baffled Vadym Mikhailovich. The technician on Vera’s side spoke through a microphone:
“The results indicate that the male subject responded first.” The doctor began making a note when he was interrupted by the second technician’s voice:“Comrade Technician Yuri has misinterpreted the data. The results on the male’s machine conclusively indicate that the female responded first.”
How could that be so? The doctor assumed some malfunction of the equipment and had his technicians double and triple check the electrical wiring. He improved the sensitivity of the timing device to a ten-thousandth of a second. And again he brought in Vera and Maksim, who stared at each other through the soundproof glass. The doctor initiated the test.“The results indicate that the female subject responded first,” technician Lev said into the microphone.
“Comrade Technician Lev has misinterpreted the data. The results on the female’s machine conclusively indicate that the male responded first.”Which was patently impossible, knew Vadym Mikhailovich.
“We must run the experiment again,” he announced. But when it was repeated, the results did not vary. Again, the technicians tested and tuned the equipment, and again the results remained the same, indicating that both Vera and Maksim responded first when asked if they loved the other. Then Vadym Mikhailovich hit upon an idea. He changed the question to “DO YOU LIKE THE SYMPHONY?”The screens flashed and changed to “PRESS YES OR NO.”
“The results indicate that the male pressed NO fourteen hundredths of a second before the female pressed YES,” the technician on Vera’s side spoke into his microphone.“The results on the male side confirm Comrade Technician Yuri’s conclusion,” said technician Lev, at which point the arteries carrying blood to Doctor Vadym Mikhailovich Tatarinov’s brain nearly burst. His consternation became so extreme that he could no longer stand the sight of the two and went home to his apartment, leaving instructions that they not be fed or given hot water for four days.
Vadym’s apartment felt enormous to him. He looked around at the furniture that had not changed since the day he moved in. A record player sat on a table, unused for a decade now. Not bothering with a glass, he took three gulps of vodka and sat down at the table where he ate his breakfast. He saw his reflection in a porcelain plate on the table. “Vadym Mikhailovich Tatarinov! That’s who you are! And who do these pieces of shit think they are, trying to give you a stroke?”
The doctor nodded in agreement with himself. He took another gulp.“It’s love, isn’t it? Well, it must be. It is an abnormal case, but it is love. Beyond all explanation. Love!”
“Well, you know just what to do, I would assume – you are a doctor by profession and are familiar with the treatment of cancers.”He finished the bottle and went to bed sick.
At the end of the four days, he had Vera hauled before him. He lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.
“Doctor, I have not eaten in four days.”“I am aware of that. It is a prescribed part of your treatment.”
“What is this treatment? Your guards abuse and starve me. Can you tell me, what does this treat? An excess of food in my diet? An absence of rape in my daily regimen?”“Vera, you will lower your voice and understand your place. You are a subject, one of many, in a very important experiment that I am conducting, and furthermore, you are my patient. Do you understand the relationship between us? You are not to question my methods or my expertise. You are not to raise your voice at me. What you are being treated for is a persistent delusional condition. Our experiments have proven irrefutably that “love,” as the neurosis is popularly termed, is a correctable condition. You and your husband have been among our more trying cases, but I have arrived at a definitive cure and have had it implemented.”
Vera’s face looked like a blanched leek, and her mouth asked if she could be returned to her cell.Maksim Lebedevich was given cyanide in his food that afternoon and did not feel much pain when he died. Vadym Mikhailovich released Vera two days later, giving her twenty rubles and a packet of decent cigarettes as well as her husband’s personal effects. Vadym Mikhailovich wrote a report for Stalin in which he described the case in detail, though he opted not to mention the results of his final experiment when he submitted the report along with his letter of resignation.