Calligraphy Lesson (10 page)

I laughed half the way home. When Vera Lvovna had just gone to the hospital, my father and I went to see her. After a thaw, there was sun, the way was impassable, and we could barely get through the mud. My father was hot, he was sweating, striding, his coat open. We bought oranges. I couldn't wait and ate one on the way and afterward my fingers were sticky. It was hot in the hospital, too. The heat was on, all the windows were sealed shut, and no one was airing the rooms out because they were afraid of drafts. On the ward, there was one withered old lady on one cot, and she was on the other, lying facing the wall. We sat down, my father on a chair, me on the edge of the bed. Without turning around, Vera Lvovna said, “This is it, Mitya,
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this is it, this is it.” My father cut her off. “Stop it! Those know-it-alls say all kinds of things.” She turned around. Her face was tear-stained and swollen. “Vera, let me look at you.” My father turned down the blanket, pulled her shift to her chin, and started palpating her breasts and feeling under her arms. Vera Lvovna lay with her eyes shut. “This doesn't mean a thing yet,” my father said. “You'll see, everything will turn out fine.” Then we ate the oranges. My father slit the peel with his Swiss knife and stripped it off, turning his nails yellow. The peel sprayed. I held one section at a time out to Vera Lvovna. When we left, the janitor on the corner was breaking up the melting ice. The splashes flew straight at us. My father shouted, “Have you gone blind or something?” The man waved his hand, as if to say, Get lost, removed his mitten and blew his nose. My father went up and kneed him in the groin. The janitor deflated and crumbled. I shouted and ran to my father, trying to pull him away, but he shook me off and punched at the man's cap from above so that the lout fell to the pavement. The ice, his face—it was all covered in blood. My father came to his senses and I led him away. His hands
were shaking all the way home, and he kept begging my forgiveness. The day they did the operation, I arrived a little earlier, and there you were, waiting in a nook near the ER. We sat on a small wooden bench by a potted palm and watched the nurse move something from one cupboard to another. She must have been new; I recognized all the old ones. Then the nurse went away and the corridor was deserted. I took your hand and we embraced. That's how we sat, pressed close. Then the door opened and the nurse came in again. We should have moved apart, drawn back, let go, but that was utterly impossible, and we kept sitting with our arms around each other. The nurse said, “Young lady, let's go, you can help your mama. Don't worry so much. Everything's going to be fine.” Then I stood up and went in.

P.S. In the room where Mika and Roman sleep, the door is opposite the windows. On a sunny day, beams stream through, jostling, and twisting around at the keyhole, and forcing their way into the dark hallway already twisted, draw on the opposite wall a miniature window hung upside down where, if you squat, you can see past the window frame and billowing curtain to the overturned roof of the next building over and the rusty top of a September birch lowered into the blue sky, like the fox tail from the story. Catch it, Zhenya, big and small. Now I was coming back from the bathroom without turning on the light, and I heard movement behind their bedroom door. I squatted and looked into that same keyhole, and Mika was there helping him beat off.

If you dream of your mother and she's alive, that means trouble; deceased, a change for the better.

I knew a woman I wanted to strangle, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I'd only just
been taken home from the school for the blind. “Oh, you're blind! What a disaster! For long? Have you tried treatment? And there's nothing to be done?” And so on in that vein. “That's terrible, never to see the light! I'd rather die than be blind!” Or, “It's a pity you can't see. If you could, you'd understand.” Her pity for me was quite sincere. I regret not killing her then because I don't think they put blind people in prison. But you don't pity me, so it's relaxing being with you. Evgenia Dmitrievna, you can't even imagine how grateful I am to you for that. Then, after I got home, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a cripple. You won't believe it, but among people just like me I was happy. The legless need to live with the legless, the blind with the blind. I had friends there and it was fun. Though you won't understand me anyway. Let alone our childish games. They tried to keep us as far away from the girls as possible, but you can't watch everyone. Nature takes its course, so to speak. What plays a bigger role for us than seeing people are smells. Now you smell like apple soap. I won't hide it. While you were gone I went around your room and sniffed your clothing, your dress, your underwear. So you see, at school I wanted to go home, but when I finally got home, I was suddenly unhappy. Just imagine. One day my mother was out and I ran away and got clear across town to the school myself. I don't know what I was thinking or hoping. It was an escape plain and simple. I ran away because it was nice there—no light and no dark, no blind and no seeing. Why I'm telling you all this I don't know. I love you, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Actually, that's meaningless. Goodnight.

Papa, tell me something about Mama.

Zhenya, I'm tired.

Tell me.

Tell you what?

Something.

What something?

I don't care.

Fine, tomorrow, I'm very tired.

Now.

What should I tell you about?

I don't know. Tell me about how when you were a student you climbed through the dacha window to see mama and her father clicked his nippers.

I already did.

Tell me again.

Zhenya, let me be.

No.

Fine, then. Your mama and her parents were staying at their dacha in Udelnaya. Zhenya, what's the point of this?

Keep going.

Her father had long nails. He called them nippers and was always clicking them. He was convinced, and tried to convince everyone, that the only help for mosquito bites was if you pressed a cross into the bite with your nail. He treated everyone. He was always trying to sink his nippers into my arm, too. After evening tea I said goodbye and headed for the station because the next day I was leaving for three months to do my stint as a medic at army training camp. Of course, I didn't go to the station, I went for a swim past the dam. The moment it grew dark, unbeknownst to anyone, I returned. The window was open. Her father was already asleep and her mother was spending the night in town. And that was the first time. The funniest thing was we didn't know what to do with the sheet. There wasn't much blood, but still. And the mosquitos were relentless. We lay there slapping each other. I said, “You can say you crushed a bloodsucking mosquito.” She laughed. We never did think of anything.
The dawn came, I dressed, and I was about to jump from the windowsill. She whispered, “Wait a sec!” And she held out the crumpled sheet. On the windowsill was a glass jar of water with some kind of flowers. As I was jumping, my elbow knocked it over and it exploded like a bomb. At four in the morning. I leapt over the fence and ran for the station. Not ran, flew. And it was windy, too. I unfolded the sheet, held it over my head by the corners, and hollered for the whole neighborhood to hear, like a lunatic. “Hurrah! Follow me on the attack! Hurrah!” And the sheet flew overhead.

Here you are, Zhenya dear. But I guessed that if you came today everything would be fine. What exactly would be fine, I don't know. There's nothing I need, after all. I was like you and I wanted everything. Now I have and need nothing. Alyosha will be here soon with his Vera. He sent a telegram. They wanted to spend longer by the sea, but they only lasted a month. It's boring there. In the first half of the day, he wrote, they walked along the empty beach and fed the seagulls, and in the evening there was a touring midget theater. Here's what's funny. I was in Yalta a hundred years ago, and there were midgets then, too. But Vera keeps getting worse. She's capricious, has hysterics, makes scenes in public, and cries at night. He's had it with her. But what can he do? He has to be patient. She doesn't have long, after all. This is God's punishment for her, Zhenya dear. He punishes everyone and never lets anything slide. There's not going to any Judgment Day there. It all happens here. Zhenya, you don't even know how despicable she is. She cheated on Alyosha. I know everything. Alyosha was on an expedition in Central Asia catching some of his rodents. He asked Vera to come along, but she wanted no part of it, naturally. I was living with them then. Only a year had passed since the wedding. With Alyosha there she kept herself in check, but now it was bedlam.
She'd be getting ready to go out and suddenly shout, “Where's my button?” “You must have lost it somewhere, Verochka, and not noticed.” “But when I came home all the buttons were there!” she said. I reassured her. “Life is funny that way. A button comes off and you don't notice.” She shouted, “But I'm not crazy! All the buttons were there!” Is that supposed to mean I secretly cut off her lousy button? How many years have passed, yet when I think of that button, I shake with fury. I was supposed to go to Terioki for a rest then. I got to the station, boarded the train, went to get my ticket, and suddenly—Lord, have mercy—no wallet, no ticket, and there was a neat, very straight slit in my purse. I'd been robbed in the crowd at the station. Nothing to be done for it, so I went home. In the pouring rain, with my suitcase. I finally dragged myself there. I looked and there was an unfamiliar umbrella drying in the entry. A man's raincoat on a hook. It smelled odd, of some stranger, and there was also the smell of fresh nail polish. I listened: water splashing in the bathroom, and someone humming, a bass voice grunting. I opened the door to their bedroom, Alyosha's bedroom, and Vera was sitting naked in front of the pier-glass with her back to me, her foot resting on the base, polishing her nails. I coughed. She looked up and saw my reflection. I thought she'd cry out, get scared, start squirming and begging my forgiveness. But as if nothing were the matter, she dipped the brush in the bottle and went to smear the nails on her other foot. I said, “Why so quiet, Vera? Say something.” I heard a splash from the bathroom. She replied, “What am I supposed to say?” “What do you mean?” I said. “I just left for the station and here you are…” She laughed. She was sitting with legs splayed, her big toenail red and the rest still bare. “Lord, who on earth are you?” She laughed. “Who? What makes you better than me?” I said, “What about Alyosha?” “What about Alyosha? This doesn't change anything. What am I supposed to do, jump out the window? If you tell him, he won't believe you anyway.
Leave and don't come back until tonight.” So I left. I realized right away who it was in the bathroom, Zhenya. But I won't tell you. Why should I?

It's very simple, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Here's a ruler and a Braille board. One—open; two—close. You use this stylus to punch dots in the paper, but only Turkish-fashion, right to left. To read it, you take out the page, turn it over, and read it normally, left to right. Give me your hand. Feel it? One dot on top is A. Two dots one up and down is B. Two dots side by side is C. By the way, Braille also played music. All of Paris went to his concerts. He played cello and organ. But I have my exam in a week. If I end up failing, we'll be leaving you. I just feel sorry for Mirra Alexandrovna. For some reason she thinks I'm going to be a great musician. Poor, silly mama! I can't make her understand that the sensitive ear characteristic of every blind person isn't enough, that that sensitivity doesn't mean musical ability and true talent is as rare among the blind as among the seeing. I once heard my professor tell someone, “A pointless undertaking, doesn't have the hands or the feeling. But I'm still hatching. I have kids at home asking for food. I have three, dear.” When we get home, I'm going to get a job as a piano tuner, that's good, too. If Fate smiles on me, I'll marry some kind blind girl. What else does happiness require? Normal young women only marry blind men in novels, Evgenia Dmitrievna. And if they do, it's out of ignorance. To tell you the truth, blind people are awful, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Spoiled, capricious, wronged, vindictive. The blind man's subordination in human contact is almost continuous; he doesn't choose his companion, who is whoever wants to be it. The constant dependence is humiliating and has a putrefying effect on the psyche. Egoism and vanity are the main motives for human actions; all that gets magnified exponentially for the blind. The blind man's vanity is fueled by the exaggerated admiration the seeing express for him out
of pity for the cripple. The blind man is always in someone else's power, so he can't help but be suspicious, mistrustful, and vindictive. Marrying a blind man is like sacrificing yourself, only the sacrifice is thankless. People won't understand you anyway. They'll pity you and sympathize, as if you'd gone into a convent or become a nurse aide. And you won't be able to explain. So that everything's going to turn out just fine, Evgenia Dmitrievna. You'll see.

Zhenya dear, have you gone to bed? Are you asleep? Roman's going to play a little, just a little, all right? Please forgive us. His exam is soon, and that will be it. The professor said Roman has great talent, that he'll be a great success. He needs to work. He needs to study hard. Preparing for a performance is very difficult. He has to read the line with one hand and play with the other. Roman is very worried. He puts on a good face and pretends he doesn't care, but in fact he's afraid. If he doesn't get in, Zhenya, it will be a terrible blow for him. Not just a blow—a disaster. You do understand. In his position it is so important to find a place in life, to be essential to someone. Today I'm here, I'm always by his side, but tomorrow he's alone. How will he live? Who needs him? I think about this all the time, Zhenya. Lord, you look so much like your mama! You know, I should tell you one thing. It's silly, of course, not worth mentioning, and your dear mama's long gone, but I can't get the idea out of my head of how I deceived her. I mean, it wasn't really a deception, but still. She asked me to sew her a dress, and I promised. We came up with the idea together: a low back and a heart-shaped slit in front. Rustling taffeta with bell sleeves and a full ruffle. Imagine, chiffon ribbons from the fastening on the left and from the side seam on the right tied up in back in a bow. A dream, not a dress. She'd already bought everything: the taffeta, the buttons. I took the material home. You saw me off.
You were funny. You said, “Aunt Mika, bring me a wooly-booly!” I promised to bring the dress by her birthday. But I was having so much trouble with Roman, I never got around to the dress. There was never time. I kept putting it off. Of course, I didn't get it done, and it was time to go. I arrived, I was crying, and I lied that I only remembered on the train—I'd ironed the finished dress, folded it, and forgotten to pack it. She was so upset! Naturally, I would have finished the dress later, but that last time your mama turned up all of a sudden, without warning. She appeared on my doorstep and my first thought was, The dress! But she didn't remember. Something had happened between her and Dmitry. Or maybe nothing had, she just couldn't take it anymore. I don't know how she stood it all. They'd just got married, and he was already very strange. He wouldn't speak to her for days on end. He'd sit there looking at the wall. I asked, “What's the matter with him?” But this made her uncomfortable. She smiled and replied, “Pay no attention. Every person needs a wall sometimes.” I didn't understand their marriage at all. They didn't know the first thing about each other. Your mother married him in a frenzy. One day she was trying to convince me that Dmitry was an animal, a lewd pig, a narcissistic nonentity, and the next she announced she was getting married. I said, “Are you out of your mind?” She shook her head. “Don't ask. I know nothing. And I don't want to.” Mitya didn't just not love her, it was as if he were taking something out on her. Even having outsiders in the house didn't stop them. In my presence there were scenes between them at night that would end with Mitya taking the featherbed and going to the kitchen. She'd burst in and shout that she wouldn't let him treat her this way, that she was putting up with it for the child's sake, there was a limit to everything, and she would make him listen to her. But Mitya would interrupt her. “Pipe down, you'll wake Zhenya!” You would wake up and cry, and your father would pick you up. I would
try to calm her down, but she was already hysterical. “You don't need me, I'm just in your way, you need the child, but you hate me! So know this. You won't have me or Zhenya!” I kept saying, “Leave him! This won't end well!” But she put up with it, she was waiting for something. At breakfast she would start poking her fork in the butter and could spend half an hour doing that, an hour. It occurred to me that she was quietly losing her mind. On my last visits her feelings toward you seemed to have changed. The slightest thing irritated her. The minute you acted up at the table, she'd start shouting, smacking you in the face, and pinching you so hard she'd leave bruises. You would cry, of course, and she would hit you even harder. “Quiet! Be quiet!” Then she'd clutch her head, cover her ears, and run away. One time you put on her hat, gloves, and shoes, draped yourself in her beads, took her rings, and smeared on her lipstick—and she lunged at you with a bamboo ski pole from your kiddie skis. We barely got her arms twisted behind her back that time.