Definitely Maybe (16 page)

“All right,” Irina said. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was staring out the window and smoking, inhaling every few seconds. “All right, there’s nothing to talk about. You always did say that love was an agreement. It always sounded so good: love, honesty, friendship. But you could have been more careful not to leave bras behind … Maybe there’s a pair of panties, too, if we look hard enough?”

It came to me in a blinding flash. I understood it all.

“Irina! God. You scared me so badly. You gave me such a scare.”

Of course, that wasn’t at all what she expected to hear, because she turned to me, with her pale, beautiful, tearstained face, and looked at me with such expectancy and hope that I almost began to cry myself. She wanted only one thing: for this to be cleared up, explained away as nonsense, a mistake, a crazy coincidence, as soon as possible.

That was the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to keep it to myself anymore. I dumped the whole horror story and the madness of the last two days on her.

My story must have sounded like a joke at first. But I went on talking, paying attention to nothing, not giving her a chance to get in sarcastic comments. I just poured it out, without any particular order, not worrying about chronology. I saw her expression of suspicion and hope change to amazement, then anxiety, then fear, and, finally, pity.

We were in our room by then in front of the open window—she was in the chair and I was on the rug, leaning my cheek against her knee; there was a storm outside. A purple
cloud poured itself out over the rooftops, pelting rain, frantic lightning bolts attacking the high-rise’s roof and disappearing into the building. Large cold drops fell on the windowsill and into the room. The wind gusts made the yellow drapes billow, but we sat motionless. She caressed my hair quietly. I felt enormous relief. I had talked it out. Gotten rid of half the weight. And I was resting, pressing my face against her smooth tan knee. The constant thunder made it hard to talk, but I had nothing else to say.

Then she said:

“Dmitri. You mustn’t think about me. You must make your decision as though I didn’t exist. Because I will be with you always anyway. No matter what you decide.”

I hugged her tight. I guess I knew she would say that and I guess the words really didn’t help, but I was grateful anyway.

“Forgive me,” she said after a pause, “but I still don’t have it quite clear in my own mind. No, I believe you, of course I do—it’s just that it’s all so terrible. Maybe there’s some other explanation, something more, well, simple, more understandable. I guess I’m saying it wrong. Vecherovsky is right of course, but not about it being the—what did he call it?—the Homeostatic Universe. He’s right that that’s not the point. Really, what’s the difference? If it’s the universe, you have to give in; if it’s aliens, you have to fight? But don’t listen to me. I’m just talking because I’m confused.”

She shivered. I got up, squeezed into the armchair with her and put my arms around her. All I wanted to do was tell her in every possible way how terrified I was. How terrified I was for myself, how terrified I was for her, how terrified I was for both of us. But that would have been pointless, and probably cruel.

I felt that if she didn’t exist I would have known exactly what to do. But she existed. And I knew that she was proud
of me, always had been. I’m a rather dull person and not too successful, but even I could be an object of pride. I was a good athlete, always knew how to work, had a good mind; I was in good standing at the observatory, in good standing among our friends; I know how to have a good time, how to be witty, how to handle myself in friendly arguments. And she was proud of all of that. Maybe just a little, but proud nevertheless. I could see her looking at me sometimes. I just don’t know how she would react to my becoming a jellyfish. I probably wouldn’t even be able to love her the right way anymore, I’d be incapable of that, too.

As though reading my mind, she said:

“Remember how happy we were that all our exams were behind us and that we’d never have to take one again to our dying day? It seems they’re not all over. It seems there’s still one more.”

“Yes,” I said and thought: But this is one test where nobody knows whether an A or a D is a better grade. And there’s no way of knowing what gets you the A and the D.

“Dmitri,” she whispered, her face close to mine. “You must really have invented something great for them to be after you. You really should be very proud, you and the others. Mother Nature herself is after you!”

“Hmmm,” I said and thought: Weingarten and Gubar have nothing to be proud of anymore, and as for me, that’s still moot.

And then, reading my mind once more, she said:

“And it’s really not important what you decide. The important thing is that you’re capable of such discoveries. Will you at least tell me what it’s about? Or is that forbidden too?”

“I don’t know,” I said and thought: Is she just trying to console me or does she really feel that way; is she so terrified that she’s trying to talk me into capitulating; is she merely trying to
sweeten the pill that she knows I’ll have to swallow? Or is she trying to get me to fight, is she getting my dander up?

“The pigs,” she said softly. “But they won’t break us up. Right? That, they’ll never do. Right, Dmitri?”

“Of course,” I said and thought: That’s the whole issue, darling. That’s what it’s all about.

The storm was abating. The cloud was floating north, exposing a gray, misty sky from which fell a soft, gray rain.

“I brought the rain,” Irina said. “And I was hoping that we could go to Solnechnoe on Saturday.”

“It’s a long way to Saturday,” I said. “But maybe we should go.”

Everything had been said. Now we had to talk about Solnechnoe, bookshelves for Bobchik, and the washing machine, which had conked out again. And we did talk about all that. And there was an illusion of a normal evening, and in order to extend and strengthen that illusion, we decided to have some tea. We opened a fresh pack of Ceylon, rinsed out the teapot with hot water in the most exacting and scientific manner, triumphantly placed the box of Pique Dame candies on the table, and watched the kettle, waiting for the moment of rolling boil. We made the same old jokes and set the table, and I quietly took the order blank from the deli and the note about Lidochka and I. F. Sergeenko’s passport, crumpled them up, and stuffed them into the wastebasket.

And we had a marvelous teatime—it was real tea, an elixir—and talked about everything under the sun, except the most important thing. I kept wondering what Irina was thinking about, because she seemed to have been able to forget the whole nightmare—she told me everything that she thought about it and now had forgotten it with relief, leaving me alone, once again one on one with my decision.

Then she said she had to do the ironing and that I should sit with her and tell her something funny. I started clearing the table and the doorbell rang.

Humming a little tune, I headed for the foyer, giving Irina one quick look (she was very calmly wiping the chairs with a dry rag). Unlocking the door, I remembered my hammer, but it seemed melodramatic to go back for it, and I opened the door.

A very young tall man in a wet raincoat and with wet blond hair handed me a telegram and asked me to sign for it. I took his pencil stub, leaned the receipt against the wall, wrote the date and time at his prompting, signed it, returned the pencil and receipt, thanked him, and closed the door. I knew that it was nothing good. Right there in the foyer, under the harsh 200-watt bulb, I opened the telegram and read it.

It was from my mother-in-law. “
BOBCHIK AND I LEAVING TOMORROW MEET FLIGHT 425 BOBCHIK SILENT VIOLATING HOMEOPATHIC UNIVERSE LOVE MAMA.
” And a strip of paper was glued on below: “
HOMEOPATHIC UNIVERSE STET
.” I read and reread the telegram, folded it in four, turned out the light, and went down the hall. Irina was waiting for me, leaning against the bathroom door. I handed her the telegram, said “Mama and Bobchik arrive tomorrow,” and went straight to my desk. Lidochka’s bra was draped across my notes. I put it neatly on the windowsill, gathered my notes, put them in order, and stuck them in my notebook. Then I got a fresh manila envelope, put everything inside, tied it, and, still standing, wrote on the face: “D. Malianov. On the Interaction of Stars and Interstellar Matter in the Galaxy.” I reread it, thought a bit, and blacked out the “D. Malianov.” Then I put the envelope under my arm and left. Irina was still by the bathroom door; the telegram was pressed to her chest. As I
walked past, she made a feeble gesture with her hand, either to stop me or to thank me. I said, without looking at her: “I’m going to Vecherovsky’s. I’ll be back soon.”

I went up the stairs slowly, step by step, hitching up the envelope, which kept slipping out from under my arm. For some reason the lights were out on the stairs. It was dim and very quiet, and I could hear through the open windows the water dripping from the roof. On the sixth-floor landing, by the garbage chute, where the lovers had been kissing, I stopped and looked out into the courtyard. The huge tree’s damp leaves glistened black in the night. The yard was empty; the puddles shimmered, rippling in the rain.

I met no one coming down the stairs. But between the seventh and eighth floors a pathetic little man sat hunched up on the steps, with an old-fashioned gray hat next to him. I walked around him carefully and continued on, when he spoke:

“Don’t go up there, Dmitri.”

I stopped and looked at him. It was Glukhov.

“Don’t go up there now,” he repeated. “Don’t!”

He got up, picked up his hat, straightened slowly, holding his back, and I saw that his face was smeared with something black—dirt or soot—his glasses were askew, and his lips were compressed tightly, as though he were in real pain. He fixed his glasses and spoke, barely moving his lips:

“Another envelope. White. Another flag of surrender.”

I said nothing. He hit his hat against his knee, shaking off the dust, and then tried to clean it with his sleeve. He was silent too, but he didn’t leave. I waited to see what he would say.

“You see,” he said finally, “it’s always unpleasant to capitulate. In the last century, they say, people shot themselves rather than capitulate. Not because they were afraid of torture or concentration camps, and not because they were afraid they’d crack under torture, but because they were ashamed.”

“That happens in our century, too,” I said. “And not so rarely.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Of course. It’s very unpleasant for a person to realize that he’s not at all what he thought he was. He wants to remain the way he was all his life, and that’s impossible if he capitulates. And so he has to … And yet there’s still a difference. In our century people shoot themselves because they’re ashamed before others—society, friends … In the last century people shot themselves because they were ashamed before themselves. You see, for some reason, in our century, everybody thinks that a person can always come to terms with himself. It’s probably true. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s going on here. Maybe it’s because the world has become more complicated? Maybe it’s because now there are so many other concepts besides pride and honor that can be used to convince people.”

He looked at me expectantly, and I shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I don’t know, either. You would think I was an experienced capitulator, I’ve been thinking about it for so long, about nothing else, and I’ve come up with so many convincing arguments. You think that you’ve come to terms with it, you’ve calmed down, and then it starts up again. Of course there’s a difference between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But a wound is a wound. It heals, disappears, and you forget all about it, then the weather changes, and it hurts. That’s the way it’s always been, in all centuries.”

“I understand,” I said. “I understand it all. But a wound is a wound. And sometimes another person’s wound is much more painful.”

“Dear God!” he whispered. “I’m not trying to … I would never dare. I’m just talking. Please don’t think that I’m trying to talk you out of it, that I’m giving you any advice. Who am
I? You know, I keep thinking, what are we? I mean people like us? We’re either very well brought up by our times and our country or else we’re throwbacks, troglodytes. Why do we suffer so much? I can’t figure it out.”

I said nothing. He pulled on his funny hat with a weak, flabby gesture, and said:

“Well, good-bye, Dmitri. I guess we’ll never see each other again, but it doesn’t matter, it was very nice meeting you. And you do make excellent tea.”

He nodded and started down the stairs.

“You could take the elevator,” I told his receding back.

He didn’t turn back and he didn’t answer. I stood and listened to his footsteps, descending lower and lower, listened until I heard the door squeak open far below. Then it slammed shut, and everything was still again.

I readjusted the envelope under my arm, passed the last landing, and, holding on to the banister, completed the last flight of stairs. I stood and listened at Vecherovsky’s door. Someone was in there. I could hear voices. Unfamiliar ones. I probably should come back another time, but I didn’t have the strength. I had to finish it. And finish fast.

I rang the bell. The voices went on. I waited and then rang again, and didn’t let go of the buzzer until I heard footsteps and Vecherovsky asking:

“Who’s there?”

For some reason I wasn’t surprised, even though Vecherovsky had always opened the door to everyone without ever asking anything. Like me. Like all my friends.

“It’s me. Open up.”

“Wait.” There was silence.

There were no more voices, only the sound of someone many flights below opening the garbage chute. I remembered Glukhov’s warning about going there now. “Don’t go there,
Warmold. They want to poison you.” What was that from? Something terribly familiar. The hell with it. I had nowhere else to go. And no time. I heard footsteps behind the door again and the lock turning. The door opened.