Sitting on a stool, Grunya moves her head a little, in agreement.
“The building manager, he won’t change his mind?” She’s looking out from under her brow, watching as Stepan sits back down at the table and resumes working his spoon; his muscles are rolling along his shoulders like mounds.
“Don’t you be worrying.” Stepan smiles broadly and there are dark spots of buckwheat in the grooves between his teeth. “Don’t you be worrying ’bout nothing – I’ll take care of it! Soon you’ll be drinking your coffee in mister professor’s room from mister professor’s cups.”
Her fleshy lips tremble in a flustered smile, then open up a little again, alarmed:
“Even so, I feel sorry for him. He was quite a person …”
Stepan licks his spoon thoroughly. He walks up behind Grunya and places his sinewy hands on her round shoulders. Her marvelous bosom quivers under thin, faded cotton and slowly rises in a deep breath, like yeast dough on a stove.
“What’s to feel sorry about?” Stepan mouths this, whispering in Grunya’s ear. “He was, then he ended.”
There’s a strong male odor coming from Stepan, blended with the smell of buckwheat and machine oil. Grunya tightens her fingers on her knees, creasing the fabric of her dress.
“You earned it. Over twenty years, you deserve it. Here you are, still fetching him his food, his drinks, doing his washing. For free, mind you. So what if you used to work for him for real. And so what if he was a big fish. Your professor, he’d’ve died a long time ago if it wasn’t for you. So he should be thanking you he’s still alive.”
Stepan’s hands grip Grunya’s shoulders. The clock on the wall ticks audibly.
“But you and me, maybe we’ll be expanding later, too. Even when he’s gone, what’re we going to do – spend our lives huddled in two measly rooms?”
She closes her eyes and presses her ear to his rough, hairy hand. His fingers move toward the base of her neck, then further, toward the opening in her dress.
“Now then, Grushenka,” he whispers quietly, “now then, my little apple …”
The bell by the front door squawks shrilly. One ring is for the professor. The last time anyone came to see him was five or six years ago, some skinny old man passing through from Moscow to Siberia who invited the professor to teach in Tomsk, though Leibe turned him down.
Grunya leaps up. Her eyes meet Stepan’s tense gaze and she presses a hand to her mouth: Could it be them? Stepan motions angrily with his chin: Open it up. What are you standing there for? She runs into the hallway, putting the unfastened buttons on her dress collar back through their holes along the way. She feels Stepan’s heavy gaze behind her, beating at the back of her head from the doorway. She rattles the locks and chains for a long time, then her fingers finally cope with her nervousness. Grunya exhales with a gasp and reaches to open the heavy front door.
Ilona’s standing, shifting from one little heel to another and lowering her hat brim slightly over her eyes. Shameful, my God, how shameful …
A mountain of a woman opens the door. She’s breathing deeply and menacingly, like a dragon. She’s silent and her beady eyes are looking at Ilona.
“I’m here to see Professor Leibe,” Ilona says, exhaling feebly.
The mountain of a woman jabs her chin at the air, indicating a white door in the dimly lit hallway behind her. She doesn’t move from her place, though: she stands, blocking the way. Ilona presses a flat little purse to her chest like a shield and edges into the apartment, feeling faint from the thick smell of onions and porridge issuing from this woman. She wants to duck behind the white door but the menacing keeper of the threshold cuts off her passage with an arm. “I’ll announce you,” her deep voice says with loathing before she goes into the room. Ilona is left by herself in the stuffy brown dusk of the hallway.
A bright rectangle – the entrance to the kitchen – is somewhere far ahead and from it carry the smells of laundry and lunch and the sounds of the hum of female voices, children’s laughter, and a jingling bicycle bell. Along the hallway, barely discernible in the darkness, are tall doors to rooms; their white paint has partially flaked off, like fish scales. Ilona thinks someone’s hiding behind them and observing. She darts off with grateful relief when the professor’s door finally swings open and the portly woman’s deep voice invites her to enter.
Volf Karlovich Leibe, prof. med. in gyn., luminary!: that’s the note Ilona discovered in her mother’s diary when she went through her things after the funeral. The word “luminary” was underlined twice. Blushing from speculation about why her mother required a “prof. med. in gyn.,” she put away the notebook, which had disintegrated into sheets, in an upper storage cabinet. She only remembered it several years later when she was tossing and turning in bed, sleepless as usual. The bed was cooling after Ivan had left and she was agonizing over guesses as to why, after reaching the age of twenty-five, she had never once … And how could she find the right words to say that while maintaining decorum?
Her girlfriends were living the full lives of Young Communist League members by falling in love, acquiring suitors – Komsomol or Party members, or shock workers at the very least – finding new ones, marrying and divorcing, and losing count of abortions. Some had even given birth to tiny pink children who screeched in horrendous voices.
Ilona had observed all those maelstroms and tangles of female fates from the sidelines, during breaks from pounding on the keyboard of a good old-fashioned Underwood, behind whose cumbersome bulk she cleverly and unobtrusively hid from life in a small office.
She’d had few suitors and nobody had asked her to marry them. No, it wasn’t really “few.” Of course there were suitors. And they gave her womanly happiness, in the ways and amounts they could. She thirstily drank every drop of that happiness. But she hadn’t become pregnant (what a scary word!). Her womb was a bottomless vessel that accepted everything that fell into it but lacked the power to give anything back to this world. Policeman Fedorchuk, a charming, brawny fellow, was swarthy, curly-haired, dark-eyed, and irrevocably married; bookkeeper Zeldovich was prematurely bald and gray, and loved to sleep nestled into her chest; the chemistry student with the funny surname Obida had traces of eternal hypochondria on his face … They had all floated through her iron bed with the shiny knobs on the headboard – and through her life, too – without leaving a trace. And that hadn’t concerned her a bit.
Then, suddenly, there was Ivan. Vanya.
What errant wind had blown that tall, broad-shouldered looker with the arrogant gaze and upright posture into her dusty life, so reliably protected by a typewriter? Ilona latched on to him tenaciously, with all the strength of her pale fingers worn out from constant battles with the keyboard. She laughed loudly at the cinema with her head thrown back high; she blazed with shame when she put on her mother’s chiffon blouse, transparent in the bright light, for an evening stroll; she tried to be passionate and tireless at night; she sewed two buttons on his uniform tunic; and she even mastered her grandmother’s recipe for preparing thick Sunday pancakes.
In the heat of a recent argument, he’d thrown some enigmatic words about love for children in her face, as if he’d lashed her cheek. Could this stern military man with the cold gray eyes really want familial coziness and children?
Her mother’s photograph on the bureau looked at her implacably: Don’t give in! Ilona searched for the castoff notebook in the dusty abyss of the upper storage cabinet and after her trembling fingers found the sought-after address in the folds of its yellowed pages, she headed for “prof. med. in gyn.” Vanya wants children; she’ll bear them for him. If she can, of course.
The luminary could have closed his practice, changed his address, or, yes, simply grown old and died in the years that had passed. But – what enormous, improbable luck! – he still lived here, guarded by that chained-up dog, the mountain-like woman with the gaze of a hungry she-bear.
And so now Ilona is standing in the middle of the room, timidly l
ooking downward, and the rather eccentric professor is hurrying to greet her. The hems of his quilted satin robe are fluttering and his shaggy curls form a semicircle – a halo, it occurs to her! – around a high, shining forehead that flows to the back of a head that’s just as smooth. His lips press her hand, which flushes instantly with heat, since nobody has ever kissed Ilona’s fingers, not even the extraordinarily affectionate policeman Fedorchuk, and this is so unceremonious, in the presence of others.
“Thank you, Grunya,” the professor says in a singsong voice.
The disappointed she-bear woman releases air from her voluminous chest, slowly turns around, and carries her bulky body out of the room.
The professor courteously points a withered hand at a chair with curved wooden legs and varnished armrests that are reminiscent of éclairs at the Gorzin bakery. Ilona, who still hasn’t dared raise eyelashes heavy with mascara, perches herself on the edge of a seat upholstered in flowered satin. Something small and sharp pierces the very top of her leg. A nail? She decides to tolerate it and not let on.
“Forgive my shabby appearance,” Leibe’s voice babbles. “I usually receive patients after lunch. But since you’re already here – which I am glad about, sincerely glad! – let us speak now about your, ahem, question.”
Shameful, oh God, how shameful … Ilona swallows a gob of saliva and looks up. The luminary is settling in comfortably behind a large desk, placing his arms on the desktop’s light-gray velvet.
“I am listening with the utmost attention.”
The professor’s delicate-blue eyes are kindly. A hollow on his chest, with slender ribs radiating from it like sunbeams, shows out from under his wide-open robe. Ilona looks down. A luminary is permitted a lot, even possessing oddities and receiving patients while looking this outlandish.
“Hmm?” Leibe encourages her.
“I need to have a child,” she exhales. “No matter what it takes.”
The professor takes a silver spoon from a tray that’s standing on the desk and pensively rattles it a bit in an elegant coffee cup of thin, milk-white porcelain with smoothly curving sides and a flirty little handle. The jingling comes out sounding unexpectedly muted and cheap: dzin-dzin … dzin-dzin …
“How long have you wanted this?”
“I haven’t wanted it for so long … But I could have long ago … I mean, purely theoretically … or, rather, practically, too …” Ilona is thoroughly muddled and rests her chin against the ironed ruches on her collar. “Seven years.”
“And so over the course of seven years you have had relations with men but have not once been pregnant. Is that what you wanted to say?”
Ilona sinks her head deeper into her shoulders: Yes, exactly that. The upholstery nail on the chair is puncturing her leg hard, persistently. Ilona’s afraid to fidget: what if her dress tears?
“Well, for starters, you’ll need to be examined and fill out a medical questionnaire. After that it will be clear if I can help you. Or at least attempt to help.”
“I’m ready for an examination,” Ilona whispers to the ruches on her collar.
“But I’m not ready, my dear girl!” laughs the professor. “Where do you wish for me to receive you, on this desk? Yes, I run my practice at home but my apartment is undergoing renovations now. Horrible, never-ending renovations! The dining room, living room, bedroom, library, examination room, and waiting room are all occupied by unbearable workmen who ceaselessly make noise for days on end. They impede my thought, work, and life, after all. All I can do is steal some calm hours at night, when they stop their endless bothersomeness. I’m forced to work by lamplight, in my own home. Like a mouse!” He nods at a sheet of paper lying in front of him. “Fortunately, this nightmare will end soon. Grunya promised there’s not much longer at all to wait.”
“Grunya?” Ilona simply cannot grasp what’s happening. Is the luminary refusing to help?
The nail is stuck impossibly deep in her body. It’s as if she’s threaded on a skewer.
“Grunya knows everything,” the professor says, taking his cup from the table, drawing it to his mouth, and smacking his lips in anticipation. “She’s my guardian angel, I’d be lost without her. Ask her when this bedlam will end – maybe in a week or in a month – and come then.”
Ilona looks up, completely worn out from shame and incomprehension.
“I can’t wait, professor.”
“Then” – he waves his cup in the air, dismayed – “come see me at the clinic. I receive patients there on Thursdays … or maybe Fridays … Clarify that with Grunya.”
Ilona leaps up from the chair (from the nail, really) and falls to her knees in front of the professor’s desk.
“Don’t refuse me, professor! Help me! You’re my last hope!”
“No, no,” Leibe abruptly shouts, in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. “I don’t know anything! Grunya knows! Go see Grunya!”
“Only you can save me! You’re a genius! A luminary!”
Ilona crawls up to the table on her knees and drops her arched hands on the desktop. A light-gray swirl rises out from under her hands and it’s becoming obvious that the covering under the layer of dust has a rich green color. Dust blankets everything: the desktop, inkstand, open ink bottle with a dried pool of ink at its depths, a virginally white sheet of paper, and a pen with a broken nib that’s lying on it.
Recoiling from fear, the professor places his coffee cup in front of himself as if for protection. The cup has a wide crack and is absolutely empty.
“Forgive me, in the name of God,” says Ilona, slowly crawling away.
The sun is beating through dirty splotches on the three-paned window, filling the fluffy, curly halo around the professor’s bald spot with a vivid golden hue. He places his cup on the tray and slows his rapid breathing. Then he makes his way out from behind the desk, all the while glancing warily at Ilona from time to time, and picks up a large tin watering can. Streams of water pour from its holey spout into a large wooden tub from which there protrudes a dry, gnarled stick bristling with the debris of dried-out branches. It’s the skeleton of a long-dead tree.
“Forgive me, for God’s sake, forgive me,” Ilona whispers, standing and brushing off her dress. “Forgive me, forgive me …”
“Nice, isn’t it?” The flustered professor smiles and draws a finger with a long, broken nail along the tree’s wrinkly trunk. He leans back, admiring. His flat hands caress nonexistent leaves.
“Good day,” says Ilona, backing toward the door.
“I’ll be expecting you at the clinic.” Leibe nods in parting, not shifting his gaze from the palm tree.
The door opens a second before Ilona pushes it. Grunya’s gigantic body is in the opening, offering coat and hat. Ilona realizes she’s been eavesdropping.
“Is it true that Professor Leibe receives patients at the clinic on Thursdays?” she asks in the dark hallway.
“Volf Karlovich hasn’t left his room for ten years now,” answers Grunya.
A genius.
Volf Karlovich shakes his head. It’s embarrassing for him whenever he hears rapturous epithets like that from patients and students.
A luminary.
Come now! A little boy standing at the ocean’s shore, that’s how he perceives his relationship to science. And he’s not ashamed to admit that from a rostrum, gazing into his students’ wide-open eyes.
Only you can save me.
Alas, that’s not true, either. The patient’s body saves itself on its own. The doctor only helps, directing the body’s strengths to take the proper course, sometimes removing something extra, unnecessary, and obsolete. The doctor and patient travel the road to recovery hand in hand, but the primary part – which is always the deciding factor – is played by the patient, with his will for life and the strengths of his body. Advanced students who’ve already become familiar with the secrets of pharmaceuticals and have a couple of elementary surgical operations behind them sometimes dare argue with him about that.
Sweet fledglings standing on their own two feet …
Isn’t it time to go to the university? The ecstatic damsel’s visit disrupted the routine of his usual life and Volf Karlovich feels lost and confused. What time is his first lecture today? That depends on what day of the week it is.
What day is it, anyway?
Leibe looks at the clock but the hands are frozen, motionless, on its face.
He takes his professorial dress uniform from the back of his chair and realizes it’s his father’s old robe. So where’s the dress uniform? The one with dense fabric of deep blue and a row of buttons, each with a stern two-headed eagle spreading its wings? The same one with the narrow snow-white enamel insignia shining on the chest, the badge of a Kazan University professor? The same one Grunya blows the dust motes from every morning? That’s right, she took it out for cleaning.
Volf Karlovich takes a step toward the door. The smooth handle falls complacently into his palm. He tugs at it for a long time, as if he’s amiably shaking the door’s brass hand, then he pulls down sharply and strides into the black abyss that’s opened up in the hallway.
Grunya is assiduously rubbing the side of a pot with a soapy rag and the white suds bubble in the thick kerosene soot, blackening. After Stepan’s arrival, a desire has awakened in her to scour the kitchen utensils to an unbearable, mirror-like cleanliness, so in her powerful hands the professor’s basins and skillets have begun sparkling with a hitherto unprecedented gleam that hurts the eye.
Her back senses the neighboring women’s unfriendly gazes nestling between her shoulder blades. Let them look, the wretches. They dislike her so much in the communal apartment because she conducts herself as if she were the apartment’s proprietress. But why shouldn’t she? She is the proprietress. Every wall here, every floorboard, every baseboard, every flourish on the white carved wooden doors knows her hands, which have swept, cleaned, washed, and polished them hundreds of times.
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