In Times of Fading Light (24 page)

“It’s all black,” said the new girlfriend.

“It’s Monastery Goose,” replied Irina.

The bird was carved at the table and distributed in suitable portions, first the legs—Sasha got one of those, that was easy enough. She offered the other leg to the new girlfriend. Kurt and the two old people preferred breast meat anyway.

The new girlfriend looked at Sasha. Hadn’t he said anything?

“Oh, by the way,” said Sasha, “Melitta is a vegetarian.”

“A what? Vegetarian?”

“Mama, she doesn’t eat meat.”

“But this is poultry,” said Irina.

“I’ll try just a little bit,” said the new girlfriend. “But not a whole leg.”

Irina’s eyes traveled around the table—and lit upon Nadyeshda Ivanovna.
You are going to eat that Christmas goose with us today.

“Hand me your plate,” she said.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna handed her the plate. Irina forked up the goose leg, but it fell off, leaving only some of the crisp glazed skin on the fork. Irina put the glazed skin on Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s plate, and was following it up with the rest of the leg—but at that very moment Nadyeshda Ivanovna took her plate away.

“Oh, that’s quite enough for me!”

The goose leg dropped on the tablecloth.

“
Nu tchyort poberí!”
Irina still couldn’t swear except in Russian. Nadyeshda Ivanovna crossed herself. Irina slammed the leg down on her plate.

For a few moments unaccustomed silence fell over the table, until Charlotte, obviously reminded of the existence of Nadyeshda Ivanovna by the incident, began chattering away in so emphatically innocent a tone of voice that Irina almost felt offended.

“Nadyeshda Ivanovna,
kak nravitsya vam u nas
—how do you like it here with us?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “But now you’re living here, you have your own room now.”

“Nice room,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna. “Yes, it’s all fine. Only we ought to have bought a TV set in Moscow.”

“But Mama,” Irina put in. “I did buy you a TV set! You have your own TV set.”

“Yes,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna. “But it would have been better if we’d bought it in Moscow.”

“What nonsense,” said Irina. “As if we didn’t have enough baggage already! Anyway, the TV set I bought you here is much better than anything we could have found in Moscow.”

“But if we’d bought it in Moscow,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna, “it would have spoken Russian.”

Everyone laughed. Wilhelm even laughed twice, once when everyone else laughed, and once when Sasha had translated this exchange for him. Then he said, “However, there are also very good TV sets to be had in the Soviet Union.”

Silence fell again.

Then the new girlfriend said, “Oh, I must say, this tastes just great. I’ve never had such good green cabbage before!”

“Excellent,” said Charlotte, who claimed to have gone hungry all day but wasn’t eating enough to satisfy the appetite of a mouse.

“Can’t chew the meat, myself,” said Wilhelm.

And Kurt said, “The meat is excellent. It’s only the potatoes, to be honest, that aren’t quite cooked all through.”

Then eat dumplings, why don’t you? Irina thought, but she said nothing, and swallowed her annoyance. The fact was that if only she had set the table herself, everything would have been ready at the same time. But when other people came interfering in her kitchen ...

She tasted a slice of goose (she hadn’t eaten any of the meat yet, because she had had plenty of the giblets)—and sure enough, the goose wasn’t as tender as it might have been.

No one had eaten any of her radish salad.

At least the red fruit pudding was a success.

Time to clear the table.

“Let me have your plates, and stay just where you are,” Irina commanded them, so firmly that even the new girlfriend didn’t venture to get to her feet.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna was still sawing away at her leg of goose, getting nowhere. It grew no smaller. Wilhelm had the gramophone needle stuck in the groove of his back-when-we-were-in-Moscow reminiscences.

Irina took the ruins of her goose into the kitchen.

She cleared away the red cabbage and green cabbage. More than half the dumplings were left over, too.

She sat down on the only kitchen chair and lit herself a cigarette.

A picture came into her mind: Granny Marfa, her mother, Nadyeshda, and she herself—three figures bending in silence over a pan in which gray strips of pork swam among cabbage.

Why would anyone be a vegetarian? Was the woman sick? Or sorry for the animals?

Sasha came into the kitchen. “Hey, let’s have a cigarette together.”

He took a Club from Irina’s pack, and she offered him her lighter.

“Are you sad, Mama?”

“No, why?”

They smoked in silence for a little while. Irina began to suspect that the new girlfriend had sent Sasha to find her.

“Why is she a vegetarian?”

“She isn’t really a vegetarian, she does eat meat sometimes.”

“But people need meat,” said Irina. “A human being needs meat!”

“Mama, you can’t condemn a person for something like that.”

“I’m not condemning her, just asking.”

They smoked.

“Nice girl,” said Irina.

“Yes, she is,” said Sasha.

They went on smoking.

“What matters most to me is for you to be happy,” said Irina.

Outside, a few isolated snowflakes fell. Fell into the garden, which was already black with twilight, and disappeared.

Sasha ground out his cigarette. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Oh, Sasha, you join the others. I’m going to make coffee now.”

Sasha took Irina by the shoulders, pulled her up, and hugged her.

“Oh, Sashenka,” said Irina.

It was good to have such a grown-up son—and one who still smelled like a baby.

Irina put on water for coffee, put the leftovers into smaller bowls, left the dumplings in the big serving dish because she couldn’t find another the right size. Placed the pan containing the remains of the slightly too tough goose in the larder, with its lid on. Stacked the dirty dishes beside the sink.

Maybe Sasha really was different?

It was beginning, thought Irina as she poured melted butter over the stollen and dusted it with icing sugar, it was beginning to be rather a strain, living up to what Kurt wanted. Always feeling his critical eyes on her. Always exposed to comparison with younger women. Well, yes, she was getting older, damn it, she was nearly fifty—in fact officially she was over fifty. Back in the past, she had added two years to her age in order to deceive the authorities. Had changed the seven of her year of birth to a five, so that she could join in the war. And even if she always celebrated her real birthday, and told all her friends her real age—the year of birth on her papers accompanied her like a constant threat that always, and this was the dreadful thing, always came true. Came true faster all the time, at that. The moment her official age was in the room with her, her real age was coming closer. It was a time-smashing machine, thought Irina, it was as if she were doomed to age faster than other women:
For the homeland, for Stalin, hurrah!

Over coffee there was another surprise; the new girlfriend was studying psychology. Not history, like Sasha.

“You mean we have that kind of thing here?” marveled Charlotte.

“Tsychology,” pronounced Wilhelm, “is a tseudoscience.”

“Not a genuine branch of knowledge,” Kurt corrected him. “According to Comrade Stalin, it’s a sham science.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the new girlfriend.

“Could be the science of shamans,” said Sasha.

“Oh, this is all so interesting,” said Charlotte in dulcet tones. “No, seriously, children, very interesting. I’m convinced there’s a connection between the body and ... and what was it again?”

“The psyche,” said the new girlfriend.

Although she smiled, her gimlet glance was as piercing as ever.

Here Kurt rose to his feet and said, “Well, children, and now I’ll put on a little Christmas music.”

That was the signal. The presents had already been placed in front of each recipient’s seat; only Charlotte kept hers in the man-made fiber bag and handed them out directly—a transgression of the rules that annoyed Irina every Christmas. Now they all began undoing packages, rustling gift wrap, laboriously untying ribbons, unfolding paper, smoothing it out—and it occurred to Irina to wonder whether the new girlfriend was trying to draw conclusions about her own “psyche” from the gift wrap she had used. Who knew? Psychology—what was that like for Sasha? Wouldn’t you feel as if you were kind of under observation all the time?

Only Wilhelm sat there motionless, ignoring his presents. Nadyeshda Ivanovna jumped up and went to fetch the socks she had knitted for Sasha and Kurt. Charlotte was
delighted
with the travel bag of toiletries, just what she’d really wanted—what for? The new girlfriend sniffed at her perfume as if it were a bomb (next time—if there was a next time—she was going to get a pair of cotton pantyhose). Kurt had been given a pipe, and expressed his pleasure exuberantly; that is to say, he briefly acted like a six-year-old, put the pipe in his mouth, pulled the socks over his hands, and above the Christmas music chanted a rhyme he had made up in which “a pipe to smoke” rhymed with “cold toes are a joke.” Alexander tried out his new electric razor (Irina had already given him his real present, the Mongolian lambskin coat, in advance, so that it wouldn’t look too big a gift now); and Nadyeshda Ivanovna, who had been given a flowered woolen scarf and a heating pad for her bed, because she had been used to sleeping on the tiled stove in Slava, asked ten times if it hadn’t all been far too expensive, until Irina snapped at her under her breath.

Irina, too, had had her present in advance. Kurt had given her a dress and a pair of matching shoes. Not like that, of course, but in the form of an envelope containing money for her to buy them—Kurt was barely capable of buying a packet of crispbread on his own, let alone ladies’ clothing—but Irina was happy. She didn’t expect anything else. She certainly didn’t want a present from Sasha, whose grant was only two hundred marks (he really lived on Kurt’s—and her—subsidies), and she had even forbidden him to give her one; her mother had never given her anything for Christmas; only Granny Marfa had once given her a doll, homemade out of rags and straw, and mocked by the other children because her eyes were drawn on in indelible pencil. Her name was Katya, and to this day tears came to Irina’s eyes when she thought of that doll. And Charlotte’s wipe-clean tablecloths went into the garbage anyway, after a certain delay for the sake of good manners.

However, what Charlotte brought out of her man-made fiber bag this time was not a tablecloth. Or a calendar. It was THE BOOK. For the last six months, Charlotte had talked of nothing but
her book,
which was not in fact
her
book at all, since she had only written a
foreword,
but she acted as if this
foreword
was the most important part of the book, as if no one would want to read the book without
her foreword!
In short, the
foreword
had now at last been published, along with the book, and Charlotte gave everyone a copy—signed, of course! Alexander got one, the new girlfriend got one (it was signed again now, because it turned out that Charlotte hadn’t known her name), and Kurt and Irina got one between them—although Charlotte had already given them one a week ago.

Irina looked at Kurt. Kurt looked back—with his scampish expression.

And then, at last, after Charlotte had filled her man-made fiber bag with the presents she had been given in return, after Wilhelm had found his hat and Charlotte her handbag, after Charlotte had assured them once more how
delightful
it had all been, after the others had escorted them to the foot of the steps, waved them good-bye, and someone had run after them quickly with the umbrella they had forgotten—then at last the door closed, and Irina, whether or not she meant to, fell into a fit of silent, hysterical, but liberating laughter. Couldn’t even stop laughing when Kurt took her in his arms to comfort her, had to move away because she was doubled up with laughter. But then, when there was a sudden smell of burning and Sasha swore in the living room, she stopped laughing. Saw Sasha break a cup putting out the table decoration, which was on fire—and began laughing again when Sasha held a singed soft toy rabbit in front of her face:
You didn’t even unpack it, Mama.
She laughed until she cried, and it was a long time before she calmed down.

“There, now I need a cognac.”

Kurt opened the window, the smoke drifted out. They were all heated, their faces flushed. They sat down in the comfortable chairs. Irina was still shaken by spasms of laughter like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

“Well, that was quite something,” said Sasha.

“They’re getting old,” said Kurt.

He stood up again, fetched the cognac from the large compartment in the fitted wall units where he kept bottles of alcohol, poured a drink for Irina, poured one for himself, and Sasha said he would like a cognac as well.

“Come along, Melitta, have a cognac with us,” said Irina.

But Melitta didn’t want a cognac. She would rather just have water, please. And now that she had begun to warm slightly to the new girlfriend, Irina was offended. What sort of behavior was that? Or was she a teetotaler? A vegetarian
and
a teetotaler!

“Well, then, we’ll just drink on our own,” said Irina.

The two young people exchanged glances—and suddenly Irina realized.

She realized that this young woman, this unspectacular young woman with short legs and piercing eyes, with her not particularly well-tended fingernails and her disaster of a hairstyle—that this woman was about to make her, Irina Petrovna, real age not yet fifty, a grandmother.

“I don’t believe it,” said Irina.

“Mama,” said Sasha, “the way you act, anyone would think it was something terrible.”