Authors: Mikhail Elizarov
T
HE TWO OF US
were left alone. For a while we sat in the kitchen and drank tea. The old man enquired about my life—rather awkwardly, so that the subject was exhausted in a couple of words, and in the agonizing pauses he nodded approvingly with his large, shaggy Caucasian sheepdog’s head.
“How did you do in school?”
“Not bad.”
“And at the institute?”
“Not too bad.”
“Qualified as an engineer?”
“Yes…”
“That’s a good profession… And did you love your uncle?”
“Yes I did…”
Timofei Stepanovich’s grey locks were soaked and matted. His forehead was gleaming with sweat, and so was his large, spongy nose, covered in purple veins. The grey stubble covered his unshaven cheeks like little crystals of salt.
Timofei Stepanovich still looked sturdy, but the bony emaciation of old age was already apparent in his shoulders. In thoughtful moments he pushed his dental plate round his mouth with his tongue and deftly set it back in place with his lower lip.
After drinking his fill and setting down his cup, he sat there, clasping his sinewy hands with their yellow nails that looked like cheese rinds and looking straight ahead, his eyes filled with transparent blueness.
I realized that he liked my first qualification, as an engineer, but my second, as a theatrical director, was more of a puzzle to him than anything else, and he hastily tried to make up for this by commenting on my heroism in combat with the librarian of the Gorelov reading room.
“Were you afraid?” he suddenly asked. “I remember my first real fear very well. In April forty-four, I’d just turned seventeen then, my first week at the front…”
I prepared myself for an edifying war story, but Timofei Stepanovich unexpectedly fell silent for about five minutes, as if he and his story had sunk under water, and then he suddenly surfaced with the words:
“And after the war I worked as a mechanic in a depot, got married and raised two sons; they moved away and I haven’t had any news for a long time. They’re both about fifty. They’ll probably be grandfathers themselves soon. My wife died fifteen years ago. She had bad kidneys…”
He sighed and chewed on some thought with his weathered lips that looked as if they were covered in blisters.
“I’m not feeling so good somehow, Alexei. You issue the book to me and at least I can go and have a read…”
The Book of Memory, already extracted from its steel case, was lying on my uncle’s desk, and Timofei Stepanovich could have taken it himself; clearly this was the point at which my duties as librarian began. I went to the other room and brought him the Book. The old man took hold of it devoutly and almost bowed, as if he were saying goodbye and thanking me simultaneously, then withdrew into my uncle’s bedroom, closing the door behind him. Soon I could hear his muffled mumbling.
Like most of the readers, with the exception of the Vozglyakovs, Timofei Stepanovich was a solitary. His home town was Sverdlovsk. He had been introduced to the world of Gromov eight years earlier, by an acquaintance. A man who worked with him at the railway
depot was a member of a reading room, and he vouched for Timofei Stepanovich. The old man matched all the parameters—a widower, a war hero, a courageous and simple man. His first reading room collapsed because its Book was stolen shortly before the Battle of Neverbino and almost all the readers were killed. Timofei Stepanovich had also taken part in that famous battle—he was in the reading room militia. When the former reading rooms were mostly re-formed into new ones, Timofei Stepanovich was taken in by the Shironinites…
The old man read the Book, and I was left to my own devices. At the time it seemed to me that things could not possibly be more terrible. The apartment had become hateful: everything in it was now an embodiment of angst, bondage and fear. The wall-hanging with Misha the Olympic bear was disgusting, the maroon sideboard with the mirror interior that multiplied the glasses and plates was disgusting, the record player and the records were repulsive. There was nowhere to run to and no one to turn to for help.
I went out onto the balcony. The sight of the household trash— prehistoric cans and oilcloths, a dried-out stool, a little cupboard with no doors—made me want to howl and sprinkle the ashes and bony fag ends from the ashtray on my head. I looked out from my imprisonment at the dreary, rainy, crumbling landscape—the soaking-wet high-rises in the distance, the tawdry strip of forest.
I drank the remainder of the cognac, but I didn’t get drunk. I turned on the television in the kitchen—quietly, so as not to disturb Timofei Stepanovich. They were showing
The Ballad of a Soldier
, and as I watched the black-and-white images I fell apart completely.
When it got dark, the mumbling in the bedroom was replaced by long, choking snores. My first thought was that the old man was dying. He was half lying on the bed, with a pillow under his back, and his head had fallen forward onto his chest. His face seemed somehow soft and boneless, as if it had half melted. His lower jaw had dropped open, limp and helpless. He was breathing abruptly and fitfully, producing those terrible dying sounds. Under his eyelids
his eyes were racing about, as if Timofei Stepanovich were rolling them wildly. I almost called an ambulance, but I had already seen his dental plate lying beside the Book. For some reason the little yellow prosthesis, covered in spittle, reassured me. Timofei Stepanovich had prudently taken it out. Something told me the old man was not suffering a heart attack after all. The snoring gradually become fainter and was replaced by normal breathing. The eyes also settled down and a few pale little tears seeped out from under the eyelids. I hurried out of the room in order not to embarrass him.
After the reading Timofei Stepanovich spent a long time getting washed, and only then joined me in the sitting room. It’s hard to describe the change that had taken place in him. A strange emotion, entirely unlike happiness or pleasure, lit up his face. This facial glow was a mixture of muted, radiant rapture and proud hope. The actors in old Soviet films knew how to portray something of the kind when they gazed into the industrial distance.
“There is meaning, Alexei!” he exclaimed, with his eyes glittering. “And death is not in vain!”
His words sounded insane to me.
“Perhaps you should lie down for a while, Timofei Stepanovich?” I asked.
“No need for that,” he said, rubbing his hands excitedly. “I won’t sleep all night long now. But you rest! Build up your strength…”
And he really didn’t sleep a wink until the morning. He poured water in the kitchen, clattered cups, walked up and down the corridor, singing: “We have no barriers at sea or on the land, we fear neither the ice nor the clouds…”
My dawn drowsiness distorted the words and I listened intently, unable to make sense of the string of phrases. I covered my head with a pillow.
“The flame of our heart,” Timofei Stepanovich crooned, “and the banner of our country we shall bear through worlds and ages…”
*
And in the morning the doorbell rang. Tanya and Marat Andreyevich had arrived. They had kept their promise of the previous day and bought plenty of food. Tanya deftly emptied out the bags. Marat Andreyevich said something in a muted voice and the old man greeted every grocery that was laid on the table by name: “chicken”, “sausage”, “onions”, “potatoes”, “cucumbers”—so that even without getting up, I was acquainted with the contents of the fridge. Timofei Stepanovich loudly approved all the provisions, said goodbye and left me to Tanya Miroshnikova. Marat Andreyevich had only dropped in for ten minutes to help with the shopping bags. After that he would dash off to the clinic.
Sparrows were chirping audaciously on the balcony and there were bright-blue glimpses of sky between the curtains. I had noticed before that sunlight set healing processes to work within me; when subjected to the effects of photosynthesis, my depression of the previous evening would often evaporate.
In one of the neighbours’ apartments a radio splashed out a joyful baritone voice: “A-a-nd the last train again got away from me again, and I wa-alk along the sleepers, a-along the sleepers a-a-again…”
I got up off the sofa and managed to get into my trousers at the third attempt. Marat Andreyevich was sitting in the kitchen, browsing through the newspaper
Arguments and Facts.
Tanya had dropped a bloodless chicken onto a flat wooden executing block and was already setting about the carcass with a knife.
“You’re awake, Alexei Vladimirovich!” Tanya said with a studied smile. She looked exhausted and older. The purple bruise on her cheek had been painstakingly powdered.
“I hope we didn’t wake you,” said Marat Andreyevich, setting down his newspaper. “How are you feeling, Alexei?”
“I still can’t take in what happened yesterday,” I told him morosely.
Tanya froze for an instant, twitched her shoulders, sobbed and quickly raised one hand to her eyes in an attempt to hold back
the tears that hand sprung into them. For a moment it seemed to her that she had mastered her emotions. She leaned down over the chopping board again, but shook her head, apologized and walked out of the kitchen. Water started running noisily in the bathroom sink.
I felt awkward that my cowardly attempt to speak openly about my problems had reduced Tanya to tears. After all, she and the other Shironinites had lost four people who were dear to them.
Tanya came back with her freshly washed eyes still pink from her recent tears. The water had washed off her powder, and the contusion on her cheekbone had turned plum blue.
I still didn’t know how to correct my mistake, but in order to say something at least, I told her:
“Tanya, please don’t address me so formally. There’s no need at all to use my patronymic. Just Alexei, or Lyosha…”
“I don’t agree with you there,” Marat Andreyevich put in delicately. “Respect for seniority is very important for safeguarding relationships, and it has no effect on the quality of friendship. Correctness is not distance: it’s a caring attitude towards the person you’re talking to, like rubber gloves, if you like—to prevent infecting the friendship… Don’t you agree?”
“You’ve worked out an entire philosophy, Marat Andreyevich,” Tanya said with a playful frown, forgetting her tears. “Alexei, how do you like your chicken;
tabaka
or…”
“You know, Tanya, I hate chicken.”
That clearly upset her.
“You don’t like it?” She glanced helplessly at Marat Andreyevich as if looking for his support. “Why not? It’s delicious…”
“Just the smell of it makes me feel sick…”
Tanya implored me piteously.
“The way I’ll cook it, there won’t be any smell of chicken. I’ll marinade it with garlic!”
“Alexei, imagine that it’s not a chicken but, say, a giraffe’s head,” said Marat Andreyevich, rushing to Tanya’s rescue. “Exotic
African meat. Look, here are the horns, and the mouth… See, it looks just like that…”
Tanya laughed, and then Marat Andreyevich smiled too—for the first time in three days.
Several months later I shared these touching memories with Lutsis, saying that my state at the time reminded me of some elements of the cult of Tezcatlipoca, in which the victim chosen by the priests as the earthly incarnation of the god was showered with princely honours and then condemned to slaughter.
Denis took this declaration seriously and even took offence for himself as he was then and for the Shironinites. “Perhaps our attitude to you was like some Indian religious mystery, only with the difference that in the final analysis the priests would have sacrificed themselves, and not the incarnate god.”
E
VEN AS A CHILD
I imagined human life as a something similar to the cycle of the year and divided it up into months. January was white, swaddled infancy, February was early childhood, with its slow, half-frozen time, March and April were filled with school, and May was provisionally the time for college studies. At the age of twenty-seven I suddenly realized with bitter surprise that the June of my life was already approaching its end…
The people I always felt the greatest pity for were the “August women”. I pitied their fading heat, all their ripeness that was still so toothsome, that holiday-resort aura rapidly approaching its end. The tickets have already been bought for the train; in a day or two it will be time to fold up the sunshade, get dressed and leave the sunny beach of vigorous maturity to travel into September and the fifties, with a direct line from there into pension-book October and on into the endless winter, into the shroud and the grave of December, which accepts everyone “from eighty upward” into its geriatric group…
Tanya Miroshnikova was a typical “August woman”. That Tuesday I saw her as someone quite different, not in her crude disguise as a “dacha lady”, and not kitted out for combat. She had put on a peach-coloured dress—yellow and orange, warm August colours. A slim, well-proportioned woman with wonderful eyes—blue in the sunlight, green at sunset, and grey in gloomy weather. Tanya’s loose hair suited her very well—chestnut, with the glint of a wave in motion; if she gathered it into a ponytail, it
brought out something touchingly monkey-like in her face. How old was she? Forty, probably. On her bulging, childish forehead three parallel wrinkles had appeared, almost deep enough to be fate lines. The large white pellets of her false pearls looked touching on her withering neck.
Tanya was a teacher; she taught physical education in a school. She had graduated from a teacher-training college. Tanya’s sporting career had only advanced as far as a first-level qualification in fencing, but this highly useful skill came in very handy for the Shironin reading room. Fifteen years earlier Tanya had had a botched abortion, after which she never fell pregnant again. Doctors and medicine didn’t help, and one day her husband left her. Tanya had been introduced to the reading room by a friend of her deceased mother. At that point Tanya was on the verge of suicide, and the tender-hearted woman spotted that just in time and gave Tanya the gift of a new life and a large family.
I’m sure my rapid acclimatization to the new place owed much to Tanya Miroshnikova’s wonderful female charm. She was an easy person to be with—always smiling, she made it easy to like her, and she knew how to listen. She always praised me and supported me, and simply loved me just the way I am: impressionable, nervous, far from the most courageous of men, with only the title: “librarian”…
I remember that on the Tuesday we spent together Tanya and I agreed to find a substitute for the chicken. We settled on fried potatoes and tinned fish. Tanya groused for a while, and then made me draw up a list of what I didn’t eat for the future—she was terribly upset when she saw that cabbage soup and jellied meat were both out of favour.
Marat Andreyevich left to go to work, and Tanya and I spent the whole morning sitting in the kitchen. She questioned me eagerly about my past. Unlike Timofei Stepanovich, she was absolutely delighted that I had studied to be a theatrical director. I told her about my old successes in the CJI, and she immediately started assuring me that she had seen me on the television, but I denied
it. At the end Tanya exclaimed enthusiastically, “Alexei, you’re a creative individual!”
I suggested that she read the Book and she responded enthusiastically, although at first, out of politeness, she said that her job was to guard me, not to read the Book.
She withdrew into the bedroom. But I wandered aimlessly round the apartment, browsed through a novel by Pikul, starting from the middle, and then dozed. When I woke up, I looked through my uncle’s gramophone records and then picked up the phone. I tried calling home and got through on the third attempt, catching my mum in. I was already relatively calm, and my voice didn’t betray my anxiety. I told her as nonchalantly as I could that I would try to solve the problem of selling the apartment in the next two months—it couldn’t be done any quicker than that. Mum immediately started worrying if I had enough money and I assured her that life in the deep provinces was very cheap, that in general I liked the town and I had met some very warm-hearted people in the housing office who had promised to help me find a buyer. I lied, and my mum, entirely satisfied, asked me to keep my father and her informed about developments.
The moment I put down the receiver, Tanya came out of the bedroom. I was embarrassed, because I wasn’t sure if she had overheard my conversation, although of course it hadn’t touched on the interests of the reading room. But on taking a closer look at Tanya, I realized that she wasn’t concerned about trifles like that. Her pink, flushed face was set in an expression of radiant, tender rapture, directed inward. I observed this luminous, incomprehensible condition without moving, afraid to disturb it with a superfluous movement or word.
Tanya came close to me. The pupils of her slightly narrowed eyes were drifting in a disquieting sensuality, as if she had been exhausted by hours of lovemaking that was not corporeal, but fundamentally different in nature. Her mouth was half open and she was breathing in short sighs, swallowing them, so that
her throat and her lips produced slightly sticky sounds, like a kiss separating. She spoke with a faint, provocative hoarseness in her voice: “Everything’s fine, Alexei…”
That night, when I reached out for my uncle’s porn magazines, to browse through them before I fell asleep, I realized that I could manage perfectly well with just that memory of Tanya.
And two weeks later, during her fourth watch, she told me at breakfast with stupefying directness: “Alexei, don’t take this the wrong way. You’re a young man, you need a woman, and there’s nothing shameful about that. It’s hard for you to be locked up like this. If you like, I… I promise you there wouldn’t be any problems with me. You’d feel better. It’s physiological, so it’s hard to fight it, and stupid to try. This probably all sounds vulgar… It’s just so that you can feel more comfortable. Just for the time being. When things calm down, you can date anyone you like. If I’ve shocked you or offended you, I’m sorry. I know I’m not exactly right for you—my age… and maybe you have a girl in Ukraine…”
I thanked her, embarrassed—“Thank you, Tanya…”—and prudently avoided accepting this offer.
The point was that literally only a few days earlier I had heard something similar from the youngest Vozglyakova sister, with the simple difference that she had acted quite directly and unequivocally. After informing me that before reading the Book she was always intensely agitated and began sweating, Veronika locked herself in the bathroom and emerged from it naked. Looking at her, I was prepared to change my disdainful attitude to voluptuous figures. The vision before me had the firm curves of a plaster
Girl with an Oar
in a Soviet park.
Glowing white and covered in sunny little drops, Veronika first bewailed my enforced solitude and assured me that she was willing to do everything she could for what she touchingly called my “male comfort”. As she spoke, Veronika dried herself with a bath towel, doing it with a quite inexpressible, artless prudery.
I cast an alarmed glance at the small, round apple-breasts, at the strong broad belly, at the wet curly cluster below Veronika’s mighty hips, but caution defeated temptation. I was sure that this was simply an attempt to bind me to the reading room with a woman.
I rather demurely changed the subject to my Uncle Maxim. This device worked, and Veronika immediately turned more serious and got dressed. Then she read the Book, and lost all interest in conversation.
The next morning Veronika Vozglyakova was relieved by Marat Andreyevich, and just before she left she whispered to me at the door that the offer to cater to my male “comfort” was still in force.