“What?
The De-cam-er-on
? Give me a break! That
Decameron
’s kid stuff. Ever heard ‘Luka Mudischev’? The actor Vesnik does it. ‘The Mudischev clan was ancient, it had a patrimony, villages, and giant firs!’ Come over, I’ll play it!
The Decameron
. Hah! Kid stuff, Ryaba, kid stuff!”
“It all depends on your imagination,” Tregubov the intellectual interposes weightily. “Some guys can get off on a keyhole. I don’t think
The Decameron
’s half bad. Quattrocento, feast during the plague … Italy! It’s not ancient Russia. Signorine, not girls! Pinos, not pines!”
Tregubov knows what he’s talking about. In his not quite seventeen years he’s the only one in class who’s been abroad, he even lived in Italy. His father worked at the Soviet consulate in Rome.
“Pinos? Is that like a blowjob?” Mesropov.
“No, amico mio, it’s a Mediterranean pine tree. A sky of purest blue! The sea! The sun!
O sole mio/sta ’nfronte a te!/O sole, o sole mio/sta ’nfronte a te!/sta ’nfro-o-o-onte a te-e-e-e!
” Tregubov sings, breaking into a falsetto.
“A goddamn Caruso!” Mesropov says with respect.
Boltyansky enters the yard wearing a black suit and a skinny black tie. His black hair is combed back and slicked so it shines. Seeing Mesropov, he nearly stumbles and his cheeks break out in red spots.
“Hey, pino,” someone shouts, “want to go for a walk?”
Friendly laughter.
Ryabets doesn’t stick around for the party. He takes his diploma and leaves. As he’s walking down the stairs from the auditorium, Boltyansky catches up to him.
“You’re taking off?”
“What do you care?”
“You’re not staying for the dance?”
“I don’t give a damn about that.”
“When are you going to return the book? My parents have been asking. Did you read it?”
“Not all of it. Exams. I’ll finish tomorrow. I’m fast.”
Buratina passes them on the stairs. Powdered cheeks, high heels, short little skirt, lacy stockings, and looking slightly sloshed—she’s giggling oddly. Boltyansky licks his lips. Three more steps up and she stops.
“Ryaba, want a drink? The kids are in the gym. They still have some left.”
“No, I’m going home. I have a headache.”
Ryabets can’t tear his eyes away from Buratina’s legs. She smiles.
“Home, home, home,” she teases. “To his mama … Why don’t you come to Silver Pine Forest tomorrow? Third beach. Know it? We’ll go swimming at 5 or 6, when we wake up. My girlfriend Lida has a dacha there, her parents are taking off, so …”
“Fine,” Ryabets rasps, and heads downstairs.
“What’s with you?” he hears the teasing directed at Boltyansky. “Want to go for a walk? Hee hee hee!”
Boltyansky calls at 4 or so.
“Are you going to Silver Pine Forest? Did you forget?”
“Too far.”
“That’s okay, you can stay over. Nadya’s friend has a dacha there.”
“I don’t know, maybe I will.”
“And grab
The Decameron
. My parents are pestering me.”
“All right.” Ryabets hangs up.
Followed by a surprise: Buratina. She’s calling! In the whole ten years they’ve been in the same class, this is the first time.
“Ryaba, hi.” A depressed voice, as if she’s holding back tears. “Are you going to Silver Pine Forest? Take me.”
Ryaba’s heart is pounding. Joy! But fear too. Picturing Nadya in a swimsuit, he can’t imagine what he’ll do with himself. His swimsuit’s going to bristle!
“All right.”
“Should I come by then? In an hour?”
Ryabets hangs up and runs to the bathroom. He decides that if he does
it
a few times he might get by … He twirls in front of the mirror—uses his mama’s powder on his zits, combs his hair back, then parts it; changes his shirt, rolls up his sleeves, rolls them down. What else? What if she walks in, he kisses her, she responds, and—
A ring. Not the door, the phone. It’s her.
“Listen, Ryaba, I’ll wait for you at the bus stop. If I come over, you’ll rape me. You gave me such a look yesterday! Hee hee hee!”
Oof!
Ryabets grabs his bag and towel, throws
The Decameron
in—he suddenly remembered—and runs outside.
Nadya’s wearing a yellow shirt with the top buttons undone, and there are her breasts. And a miniskirt too. Her face is creased; she drank and partied all night long. She’s got a mark on the back of her neck. A hickey? Her eyes, half-Kalmyk to start with, are swollen; the abundant mascara highlights this. Her perfume—from a long way off. Ryabets stares and joy bubbles up inside him alternately with horror.
It’s a long trip: trolley, subway, transfer, subway, trolley. Ryabets notices glances at his companion—men’s leers, women’s frowns.
Ryabets can’t for the life of him figure out why she isn’t with Mesropov. It’s a puzzle. Going with Mesropov makes sense. Mesropov would take her in a taxi. All the way to the beach. His parents are really rich.
The trolley crosses the bridge toward pines, pines, and more pines. Pinos.
“Lidukha lives way over there,” Nadya points out the window. Tall green and blue dachas with turrets amid century pines. “We’ll go to her place after the beach, tonight. Her parents are off traveling somewhere. Will you go?”
“Maybe,” Ryabets mumbles.
They get out. Ryabets is holding his bag in front for obvious reasons.
They’re walking down the road next to a very high fence.
“Who lives here? Artists?” he asks.
“Big shots, diplomats, and artists too. Did you see the Japanese flag behind the fence at the stop?”
“Lucky dogs … In Moscow, but like being in a forest.”
Nadya shrugs.
They leave the road and walk among the pines across the sand. Nadya takes off her platform shoes. Ryabets lags behind a little.
Make up your mind!
is knocking in his brain.
She went into the forest on purpose, on purpose!
He puts his hand on Nadya’s shoulder. The girl stops.
“What are you doing?” She removes his hand.
“I … I—” He drops his bag and tries to put his arms around her.
She dodges him. “That’d be just great. This place is full of people!”
“I … I … just … wanted … to kiss you.”
“Kiss me?” She gives him a quick kiss on the lips. “There! Later, later …”
“When?” Ryabets rasps.
“Tonight, maybe. Who makes love in the afternoon?”
Mesropov and the gang are already at the beach. Boltyansky’s there too. The others are strangers, dark-haired and guttural, Mesropov’s fellow tribesmen. They greet the appearance of Ryabets and Burataeva cheerfully, by pouring the Armenian brandy. Ryabets doesn’t drink. He takes a whiff and sets it aside. First of all, he’s never tried anything stronger than New Year’s champagne, and second, he’s angry. Nadya’s the only girl in the group. She goes for a swim. She swims for a long time and he watches her. She’s already squealing and giggling, and they’re already pawing at her. Mesropov and his friends. “Bastards! Bastards!” he shouts with his head under water so no one can hear.
They play ball, jump around, roughhouse. Ryabets sits on a lounge and rages. Then they wander over to a beer stand on Krug. Mesropov and Burataeva take up the rear with their arms around each other. Ryabets looks back. He doesn’t go near Buratina at the beer stand or later when they finally show up at the dacha of Lidukha, a little brunette with small, intense eyes. She greets her guests on the porch. Mesropov kisses her hand, and at that moment Buratina remembers Ryabets and glances around. He’s standing at the gate.
“Are you coming or what?”
“No, I’m going home.”
He’ll kill her, the bitch, he will.
Ryabets squeezes his dry fists.
Laughter from a second-story window: “Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! Hee hee hee hee!”
That last is hers.
Ryabets feels the rough wall. It’s dry, it’s going to burn, so don’t cry, mama!
First, gasoline. No problem. There’s a car by the gate.
Second, a hose. Where’s the hose? There—the dead snake on the dry grass. Everything’s very dry. Laughter and more laughter. Drunken and insolent. And music. Someone’s puking.
Third, a bottle. Here’s a jar under the porch. Two of them. Liter bottles. Great!
Ryabets uses his teeth to rip off a piece—about a meter long—of the snake-hose’s black flesh. There we go, there. He twists off the gas cap. Now suck—ha ha—suck! Acrid fumes, more, more … till you feel like puking. More, more …
E-ro-tic!
Boltyansky would say. He wouldn’t have to listen to his, Boltyansky’s, laughing, fearless, or him jerking off in the hall … Not a damn thing was going to be left of him either.
It’s flowing! First down the throat, then into the jar. A liter. Let’s pour. Another liter. That’s it, no more sucks out. That’s enough. It’s so dry it could catch without gasoline.
Now to wait. Cover the jar with a towel at least, so it doesn’t evaporate off, and wait-wait-wait.
Ryabets moves away from the dacha and sits leaning up against a sticky pine trunk. Wait. It’s a good thing there’s no dog. No dog.
Ryabets’s hand slithers into his pants. No, he shouldn’t. If I come I’ll back down. It’s wrong. For three years she’s all I’ve been thinking of. Hands off!
Her short haircut in the window. She’s smoking, tapping the ashes right where he was just standing. Oops! The butt flies like a drunken star and drops next to his invisible feet. And smolders. But it could catch fire. It could. Excellent. She’s gone. Yesterday Mesropov said he wanted her girlfriend. But who wants
her
? These guys? The Chuchmeks? Bitch.
It’s not jealousy, it’s justice. Like in
The Decameron
. She keeps him waiting in the yard in winter while she consoles herself with someone else. Italy. And the wife forced her husband to climb into a barrel to caulk it up from the inside. She’s standing there and showing him where … while another guy fucks her from behind. Cheerful folks. And there’s the one who pretended to be deaf and dumb in a convent. That’s the life!
Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! Hee hee hee hee!
When are they going to settle down? First brandy, then beer, then brandy. How will he get home? How? The trolleys will stop running. So will the subway. I’ll call my mother. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Evidence. They’ll ask his mother,
When did your son come home?
Phooey! He’s in trouble again. Don’t do that. Go home. Jerk off as much as you can. Until you can’t, ha ha.
Shhh. They’ve turned off the lights. Gone to bed? Bolt too? With who?
Quietly by myself
… Super! The terrace door creaks. Ryabets presses up against the trunk and tucks his feet in. The shadow from a nearby bush hides him. A rustle. Lidukha with the big tits. Mesropov. They stop and whisper.
“I won’t without them. Where did she throw them, the fool?”
“Over here somewhere. It’s dark, where should I look? I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“You promise but it’s my ass!”
“Lighten up, will you? I swear, I’ll be careful!”
“Uh-huh, and then it’s you and Nadya?”
“What’s with you? I didn’t invite her, you did. You and I have all day tomorrow, don’t we? When are your parents coming back?”
And he paws at her, the Chuchmek, he paws at Lidukha. He pulls her to the ground and lifts her skirt, goddamn decameron!
Ryabets goggles at the silhouettes fornicating. He feels like coming out and … kicking, kicking! Just be patient. Wait and be patient. Lidukha gives a faint cry. And Ryabets notices
her
look out the window. Her profile is sweet, but her eyes are harsh. That means she sees everything and isn’t going away. Why? Why? Mesropych rolls off the girl. Like a tick. Nadya spins around and vanishes.
They stand up, shake off, and leave. They close the door. Lock it. Very good. Wait.
Ryabets, crouching, moves toward the house, right where the couple was. There’s something kind of white in the grass—condoms! Two packets held together by a rubber band. Why did they leave them here?
Ryabets is standing behind the bridge pylon watching. The flashes he could barely make out a minute ago are visible now, and furious. The pinos are burning, the pinos! Like candles!
He stands and watches. Another ten minutes and it’ll be dawn. Two fire engines speed past. And an ambulance. Too late.
He descends to Novikov-Priboy Street, finds a telephone booth, drops in a two-kopek coin, and dials. His mother doesn’t answer right away, she mumbles incoherently, and Ryabets is relieved. She’s drunk. If she’s drunk, that means his father’s been asleep for a long time too. No need to hurry.
Last man standing. How powerful is that? Like Mesropych. Boltyansky once asked Zinaida Leonidovna, the lit teacher, about
The Decameron
. Had she read it? That idiot four-eyes exploded. “Who gave you permission to read books like that?” And Boltyansky said to her, “But it’s a classic. It says so in the preface.” “A classic?” Zinaida Leonidovna hollered. “I’ll give you a classic, Boltyansky! I worry
that’s
all you think about! It’s never occurred to you that
The Decameron
is primarily an anticlerical book. Go to the board, Boltyansky. Tell me about the images of Communists in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov’s
Quiet Flows the Don
and
Virgin Soil Upturned.
Or should I fail you immediately? Tell your parents to come see me tomorrow!”
“You mean we shouldn’t read Balzac either, Zinaida Leonidovna?” This was Tregubov, a top student. She wouldn’t dare yell at him. “What Balzac?” She was buying time. “
Droll Stories
, Zinaida Leonidovna!” She blushed deeply, removed her glasses, and put them back on. “Today we will continue our study of
Virgin Soil.
Open your notebooks …”
Ryabets finds an open doorway and hides under the stairs. He can wait here a few hours, in the corner, and then the trolleys will start running. And the subway. Don’t cry, you’ll wake people up. Don’t cry.
BY
G
LEB
S
HULPYAKOV
Zamoskvorechye
Translated by Sylvia Maizell
O
nce there lived an actor in Moscow. For many years he performed in a celebrated theater and appeared fleetingly in TV serials. He was considered famous although he never made it as a popular icon. And this didn’t bother him in the least. It happened long ago, about twenty years or so—he had the good fortune to play a small but impressive role in a famous film about the Revolution. Eventually he settled down, having decided he’d made his mark, that he’d already been inscribed in the history of cinematography.
After that film they recognized him for many years on the streets. But without any frenzy, without their eyes popping out.
Hey, look who’s coming, uh, what’s his name
… And there followed the name of the character he played, since no one remembered the actor’s real name.
He lived many years alone in a tiny bachelor apartment the theater provided for him, in a Stalin-era building by the Paveletskaya station, in the Zamoskvorechye neighborhood. The theater administration had offered several times to move him to a new place on the other side of the river, closer to work. But each time the actor refused. He liked living here. Over time he had grown fond of the mysterious silence of the streets on Sundays; more and more often he imagined another life that was long gone in its sagging mansions; in the evenings, when he strolled the narrow streets, it seemed to him that this life hadn’t ended one hundred years before but still flickered—there, behind the dusty panes, behind the chipped wooden shutters. He was fond of the amusing and naïve residents of these streets, who were on a first-name basis with each other, who at the streetcar stops exchanged rumors about a maniac from the chocolate factory; about a sect that met in the abandoned church by the metro and devoured ancient ecclesiastical texts; about the corner house with the rotunda that housed a secret brothel.
And so on.
His daughter used to come from Germany to visit him here in Zamoskvoreche. She’d clean the room and stuff the refrigerator with provisions. She’d bring medicine for his chronic cold. Photos of his twin grandchildren. And then she’d be gone for a year.
He kept a photo of the twins with a stack of fan letters in a desk drawer. He’d study the identical faces with amazement and disdain, making out, through their German imprint, the features of his ancestors.
His hobby, his passion, was telescopes. Spyglasses in particular. He assembled them, with his own hands—after shows or in the morning if there were no rehearsals. He calculated angles and radii from magazines and handbooks. And distances. He’d send a list to his daughter and she’d bring him first-class German lenses. He’d fit them in a tube made by the theater metal workers (for some reasons these workers loved him). Thus a telescope on a tripod made an appearance. And he’d pull heavenly objects somewhat closer to Moscow.
What can you see in the blurry Moscow sky, where only the moon—and that with difficulty—makes its way to the viewer? Nonetheless, right after a performance, he’d rush to Paveletskaya. If the night was more or less clear, he’d sit down on the wide windowsill and sharpen the focus. Or he’d spread maps out on the floor and make calculations. He’d determine the favorable days and segments of the sky in which a constellation would appear.
And so he lived this way from year to year. He went on film shoots and tours, to festivals in Sochi and Vyborg. He took on a lover from the theater orchestra. He’d call on her at the dormitory on Gruzinskaya Street. But mostly he spent his time between the theater and the stars. Until, ultimately, this thing happened.
One March morning he set out for the laundromat, as he did every other Saturday, to drop off his underwear and shirts. The establishment was close by, two stops on the streetcar. Since on the weekends you can wait forever for Moscow’s public transportation, and since it was sunny, he decided to go on foot. He had just set off when suddenly, ringing and rumbling, a streetcar came bounding down the street.
It simply emerged from the flow of traffic and flung its doors open.
There was nothing to be done. It was fate. He was in luck. He made his way to the end of the car and set his laundry bag down. He looked around. The car was empty, except for a man in a sheepskin coat and an old woman with her grandchild sitting up front. The car started off; the mansions, like rickety old wardrobes, drifting by. Somewhere church bells were sounding—the Saturday chimes had begun. The actor closed his eyes and imagined they were riding through old, prerevolutionary Moscow, as in some Ivan Shmelev tale or a play by Ostrovsky.
A hundred years ago the bells probably rang exactly the same way
, he thought. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the man in the sheepskin coat was standing near the front, about to get off.
His profile seemed familiar and the actor was touched with the thought that earlier, two centuries ago, everyone here would have known each other.
Moving down the steps, the man turned around and their eyes met. The actor gasped. He saw that this man resembled him; they were like two peas in a pod.
And that, in essence, before him stood he himself—only in different clothes.
Amazed, the actor dropped his bag and a towel fell out onto the dirty floor. When he managed to stuff it back, the doors had already slammed shut. His double had disappeared. The actor rushed to the window but the pane was covered over with glossy paper. Nothing was visible through the face of an advertisement diva.
He pulled the window open and leaned out. An enormous billboard,
Gold
, and a yellow church fence caught his eye. That one, the other one, was standing on a corner looking right back at the actor. And again, with frightening clarity, he saw himself. His own face—familiar to the point of disgust from all the films and posters.
Well, so what? Anything can happen in Moscow. But still, thoughts of a double made him anxious. At first he drove them away, annoyed at his stupidity. He tried to make fun of himself. He laughed. He recalled many films with just such a plot. But nothing helped. The image of his double was haunting and tenacious.
What if it’s my twin brother? After all, it was postwar times. Total confusion. We were returning to Moscow from the evacuation … Mother remembered she was holding a little baby, and that he didn’t make it, that he had died … Maybe he simply got lost?
My daughter too gave birth to twins.
No, this just can’t be true.
He’d sit down on the bed and drink a glass of water from a decanter. He’d nervously stare at the hair on his bare legs. Then he’d take out the photo of his grandchildren and scrutinize it once more. With each night it seemed they resembled him less and less—because they looked more and more like the man in the sheepskin coat. From the empty streetcar.
That means people recognize him on the streets. Of course they do! They want to know how things are. They ask for an autograph. Maybe he’s an honest fellow and tells them they are mistaken. But what if he isn’t?
He imagined clearly how that one, the other one, arrives instead of him at the theater, pays visits to the flutist. And he’d throw himself on the bed, snarling into the pillow from rage. But soon another feeling began to penetrate his impotent fury—of emptiness, total emasculation, of indifference. He had only ever experienced something similar after difficult performances. When he played a role he didn’t fully understand. One he hadn’t quite entered. He felt like a coat shoved onto a hanger; it just hangs there, dangling in the darkness, completely forgotten by everyone. Dead. He’d pinch himself and pull at his hair. He’d grab the phone. But who could he call?
Not the police.
His life gradually began to take a new turn. He shifted the telescope from the sky to the streetcar stop. For hours he’d track the people clustered there in hopes of seeing the one in the sheepskin coat. For no particular reason he kept going downstairs to the store. He hung around the counter a lot so they’d recognize and greet him. If they didn’t, he’d begin to panic. He’d loiter around the neighborhood, peering into faces, and his feet would inevitably take him back to that corner with the yellow church fence and the
Gold
billboard where his twin, the stranger, had disappeared.
But the twin was nowhere to be found.
What’s more, they stopped phoning him from the theater to remind him of performances and rehearsals. As if they had forgotten or fired him. Once he made the call himself, but an unfamiliar voice didn’t recognize him. He got frightened and hung up. So he stopped calling. He was afraid.
A week later, he simply got in his car one evening and drove downtown.
Under the notice
Today
on the poster in front of the theater, his performance was announced.
So, the impostor has already taken my place.
Relieved, the actor sat down in a café and began to drink, although he had given up alcohol after a heart attack ten years earlier. Cognac, beer, vodka—he ordered them indiscriminately. He drank greedily, without a snack, gazing between glasses at the ad behind the dusty window.
Your blood will save a life
, a girl urged from the poster, smiling her celluloid smile.
He couldn’t remember how he got home. The smoke-filled cellar at Novokuznetskaya station and the patchy shadows, in whose company he’d swigged down vodka and belted out songs, flashed in his memory.
He collapsed in his clothes but couldn’t fall asleep because he was sick at heart. Pulling his knees to his chin, he lay there and listened to the very same sentence that kept echoing in his head.
Your blood will save a life
, someone’s quiet, velvety voice kept repeating.
Your blood will save a life.
He had finally begun to doze off when a thick, enveloping nausea overtook his body. It rose up like sludge and flooded his consciousness. His heart became a big balloon about to burst into pieces.
So that’s how one dies
, he thought, starting to lose consciousness, vanishing slowly into an airless well and resurfacing later in the darkness of a sleepless night. At dawn, coming to on sweat-soaked sheets, he moved to an armchair. Hunched over from the pain in his heart, he sat there until daylight.
Around 11 he was jolted by the ringing telephone. It was a call from the theater; the troupe, it turned out, had just returned the day before from a short tour. The director’s assistant was reminding him there was a performance that evening. “In your honor,” she flirted.
“But how can …?” he mumbled into the receiver.
“The new cloakroom attendant got it mixed up,” the woman nattered on. “Instead of
Tomorrow
, he put up the sign that said
Today
. We’ll rehearse the dance an hour before curtain, as usual.” And she hung up.
Standing under the shower, he came to his senses. He was amazed how quickly, with one single phone call, the nightmare vanished. It simply came unglued like a plastic advertising sticker and flew away in the wind. Sobered up, cheerful, he set about tidying the whole apartment. He washed the floor and windows. He dropped off his underwear, which had been lying in the corner since that day, at the laundromat. He for the first time ever phoned his daughter.
“Imagine, such nonsense!” he said, chuckling into the receiver. “I knew they were supposed to go on tour, but I simply forgot.”
“Everyone’s so nervous!” The daughter gave a Chekhovian sigh, and it was obvious she was thinking of someone else as well.
“The Irish call one’s double his fetch,” she said in parting. “I’ll send you some pills. That should help.”
That evening they gave the performance. And they say he played Caesar as never before, fiercely, implacably, desperately. In such a way that before the ovation, when the emperor exits into eternity, a pause hung in the air for a few seconds—as in olden times, when the spectator truly believed what was happening on stage.
Returning home, the actor didn’t feel his usual fatigue. On the contrary, blood was racing through his veins, his energy was overflowing. He even got out of the cab and walked home on foot, swinging his arms widely.
A new life
, he thought,
will definitely begin from this night forward. It will be wonderful and serene. Unpredictable and clear
.
Not like the one which he had lived.
He entered his apartment. Without taking off his coat, he began to wander around the room.
How about going back again on the street?
he thought.
How about a breath of fresh air? To hell with it, how about meeting some woman, maybe even from the railroad station? Maybe go to a café, or a movie.
He stood looking out the window, watching how persistently and interminably the cars moved around the ring. Then his gaze fell on the telescope. It was pointing to the streetcar stop, as before. And rubbing his palms, he triumphantly sharpened the focus.
In the lens, two round-shouldered teenagers stood shifting their feet and spitting noiselessly. He moved the tube forward a millimeter and saw next to them a man with a briefcase.
His twin, his double. That very one.
When he ran out onto the street, the kids were trying to snatch the briefcase out of the man’s hands. An empty jar was rolling along the asphalt. A hand flashed, the sound of a dull, crunching blow. The double clutched at his face.
“Hey!” shouted the actor across the street. “What do you think you’re doing!”
And he stepped out into the road.
The impact of a car flipped him around several times in the air. He fell, and tumbling along the asphalt, he came to a stop, his arms flung wide.
Through the dark sludge that was flooding his consciousness, he was able to see his double take off down a side street. Then someone’s hands ran along his body, and he thought about the flutist, how she would undress him, caress him. But these were other hands. Fast and clumsy, a man’s hands. They dug into his pockets and grabbed his watch. Then wiped it off with disgust on the sleeves of his raincoat.