PKHENTZ
by Abram Tertz, 1966

"Pkhentz" was the last of the writings of Andrei Siniavski to be sent to the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz before his arrest in 1965. Although the story was referred to at the trial, it did not figure in his indictment. The story was published in English and Polish translation in 1966 and in the original Russian in 1967. It was included in the anthology Soviet Short Stories in 1968 and has become one of Tertz's best-known works. Although perhaps not his most accomplished work, it has a simple story line and a well-judged blend of pathos and grotesque humor that make it accessible and immediately appealing.

Because of its subject—the visitation of a creature from outer space—"Pkhentz" belongs to the category of science fiction. It is characteristic of much of Tertz's writing, however, in that it evades conventional classification. Tertz is a self-consciously literary writer who makes frequent play with intertextual reference, pastiche, and parody. In "Little Jinx" ("Kroshka Tsores"), for example, he inverts the plot of the Hoffmann story "Little Zaches." In "Pkhentz" he reverses the plot line of H. G. Well's The War of the Worlds (1898). The point of view is changed to that of a harmless alien, the sole survivor of a galactic accident who for years has been living incognito in a Moscow communal flat. He is more akin to a plant than a human or animal, needing only warmth and water as nourishment, but his many-limbed and many-eyed form is maimed and blinded because he was bound up for so long in the disguise of a hunchback. What we read is the irregular diary of this character, Andrei Kazimirovich Sushinskii, in which he records his failing health and his final decision to use his savings to return to the Siberian forests, where he originally landed, and perish there.

Obviously, the novelty of Tertz's approach is somewhat lost on a generation of moviegoers familiar with the movie E.T. The similarities between the story and the film may or may not be purely coincidental: E.T.'s disorientation and fear at being stranded on a strange planet, his anxiety about returning "home," the danger that he will become a victim of scientific curiosity, the final departure from the forest clearing. But Tertz's interest could not be further removed from Spielberg's sentimental reminder of the value of retaining a child's imaginative understanding and communication skills in a depersonalized, high-tech adult world. Still less is he interested in exploring the utopian, dystopian possibilities of the science fiction genre. In "Pkhentz" the focus is firmly on the present. It is a story of alienation and lack of communication in which the science fiction convention functions as a device of defamiliarization. As such it is closer to the literary tradition of the foreign visitor or traveler from an antique land—like Le Sage's Le Diable Boiteaux, Montesquieu's Les Lettres Persanes, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels—than to classic science fiction.

"Pkhentz" is an example of fantastic realism, which Tertz advocated at the end of his essay "What Is Socialist Realism?"; he called it the art best suited to conveying the grotesque anomalies of Soviet life. The last page of the essay, like "Pkhentz," was sent out separately to the West. At his trial Siniavski acknowledged that it was his own literary credo. In his final plea he quoted a sentence from "Pkhentz" that he said could apply to himself: "Just because I'm different must you immediately curse me?" Siniavski slips small but unmistakable autobiographical touches into the assumed identity of his outsider. The assumed name echoes his own and hints at his Polish ancestry. Self-deprecation and a tendency to conceal his feelings behind a protective casing of irony are very much a part of Siniavski's writing manner. It is a trait he recognizes, as he has written in his observations on Russian culture and as he commented at his trial, as being typical of the Russian character. But what he is also challenging here, with his sympathetic portrayal of a monstrosity, are conventional notions of beauty in art. In a poignant central scene the alien (it is tempting to call him Pkhentz, but this is in fact a cherished remembered word from his lost language denoting an indescribable, beautiful warm radiance) uncovers himself and bathes his strange Argus-eyed form in view of a mirror. He says, "It's no good measuring my beauty against your own ugliness. I am more beautiful than you and more normal." This is the voice of Tertz the embattled romantic, stoically echoing Victor Hugo's declaration of the inseparability of the sublime and the grotesque in art. Yet in the context of this story the romantic view is challenged both from without, by the unrelenting harshness of everyday reality, and from within, by the author's own difficulty in reconciling the animal and the spiritual sides of human nature, the body and the soul. From the alien's estranged viewpoint practically everything he encounters is threatening and repulsive. He visits a fellow hunchback whom he erroneously suspects of being a fellow alien (in fact, the hunchback, in a subtle yet pointed allusion to Soviet anti-Semitism, is an alien of sorts—he is a "closet" Jew). He undergoes a succession of violent assaults on his senses: a yapping dog, a yelling child brandishing a saber, a landlady reeking of cheap perfume, audible whispers of nosy neighbors commenting on his repulsiveness. But the greatest threat comes from a woman, Veronica, a lonely neighbor attracted to him as a fellow lonely creature. It is an acquaintance that provides the opportunity for a neat parody of the pillory scene in Notre Dame de Paris, where Esmeralda offers water to the thirsty Quasimodo. In "Pkhentz" the thirsty hunchback also cries out for water, and Veronica ministers to the tormented sufferer. She misunderstands; he does not need the water to drink but to pour over his parched body. When Veronica offers herself to this fastidious ascetic, however, she is transformed in his eyes from a sister of mercy into a monster from hell. With imagery borrowed from mediaeval representations of the sinfulness of sex—the woman's sexual organs depicted as a little old man baring his teeth—Tertz seeks to convey the disgust of raw human sexuality. The tensions and contradictions that Tertz touches upon here show that his concerns extend beyond the observation of social and political anomalies and divisions and go deeper than any trendy liberation from Soviet sexual and linguistic taboos. "Pkhentz," despite its comic elements, remains one of the author's bleakest comments on the human condition and specifically on sex.

—Jane Grayson