NINE

by Svetlana Alexiyevich

  In lieu of payment for a satin-collared blouse, a woman they knew who worked in a marriage bureau selected some photographs of the girl from an album, added the words «Blue-eyed blonde would like to meet…» and sent it round the world. Letters began to arrive in different languages with photographs of men, shops, swimming pools and big cars. The daughter was fascinated by them and asked for some money one day to buy a dictionary. The cat also showed an interest in the box containing the gaudy sweet wrappers of this brightly coloured alien world.

  To avoid paying for a lined leather jacket the marriage bureau woman offered our heroine long term credit to buy a licence for a dressmaking business and promised her two assistants and some clients. She also invited some local officials who «might be useful» to their little contract-signing celebration. Two of them left, but the third went to sleep on the sofa. They decided not to wake him up. Next morning the guest apologised and took his leave, but returned that evening and asked if he could spend the night there. Our heroine phoned the woman to find out the name of the man in the dark-blue sweater. She laughed, but told her.

  Every day the mother sat sewing. The daughter came home from school, dealt with the letters and wrote some herself, glancing occasionally into the dictionary. The man in the dark-blue sweater went off and came back in the evening, amazed at himself because no one had invited him or tried to keep him. He just felt like coming back here instead of some callous place infested with the pain of unrealised hopes. He bought fish and vegetables for supper. The days passed uneventfully, without sorrow or joy, changing only the colour of the sky and the attire of the trees, but not the essence of life, which changes, if at all, slowly, imperceptibly, each change demanding a heroic effort.

  One day the daughter read a letter out to her mother. «When David and I were fixing the motor bike our instruments were spread out on a newspaper. As I glanced at it and read your advertisement, I wondered if this was my fate,» the girl translated.

  «He's an architect from London who lives in Cape Town. He likes it there. It's warm and sunny. Look at this!» She waved a photograph of a bronzed foreigner squinting against the background of a dazzling turquoise swimming pool. He had a kind face like a pedigree dog and was wearing linen trousers. «And that picture is by his son David.» The picture showed a horse with red wings rearing up over blue waters with a black-haired boy-rider in swimming trunks. «It's a self-portrait. He's taught the children to make model aeroplanes and to draw. Shall I write to him?»

  Six months later the girl finished school, got a passport, a leaving certificate and flew off to Cape Town. Then she sent a form asking for her parents' consent to her marriage and an invitation to the wedding. She was marrying the architect.

  Our heroine tracked down her husband, now living alone for some reason.

  «Will you take me back?» he asked.

  «Sure I will,» she agreed easily, without implying any sense of injury. «As night-watchman for the warehouse.»

  He spat morosely, but all the same went to the notary's office to record his consent, peering sadly and thoughtfully through the tram window at the women outside.

  A year later the daughter came back. «I can't stand it any longer. The boys drive me mad, pestering me for food and trying to scare me all the time. With a mouse or a snake. There are snakes all over the place, slithering around under the windows. If you throw a banana into the bushes it starts a real battle. Neil won't teach me to draw. He just wants to lie in bed with the shutters drawn. And it's so hot! Never any hope of winter» She opened the window, broke off an icicle and put it in her mouth laughing joyfully. «I'm pregnant! They say it's a girl, and I've promised to go back as soon as I've had the baby, otherwise he wouldn't let me go!»

  Neil sent his wife some money and asked her to come home as soon as possible. He also sent several unanswered letters to his mother-in-law, which the daughter did not think to translate, so our heroine had no idea they existed.

  Then a parcel arrived with a picture by David. Another self portrait on a red-winged horse, only this time the rider had no swimming trunks and his little willy was sticking up.

  «He does that on purpose» the daughter confided. «They're all idiots, those kids. With them around you could never grow up.»

  The girl answered the letters affectionately, thanking them, but she didn't want to go back to Cape Town and sat down at the sewing machine instead to make little caps and nappies. In the autumn she gave birth to a daughter, called Anna after her dead grandmother, and all four of them began to live together, neither happy, nor unhappy, and died as is only right and proper each in her own time without experiencing any particularly beautiful or unusual feelings, apart from a sense of gratitude that God looks after the shorn lambs and protects them from the wind, whenever he can.

  Here one should probably conclude that such a life would be no good at all as the basis for a novel, because it is so poor, so unprepossessingly awkward, and certainly not made of the delicate pale saffron silk that Madame Bovary chose for her one and only ball at La Vaubyessard. And that most likely even this account of such a life would not have seen the light had it not taken place in the vicinity of the shoemakers with their folk heroism that spices the whole story like hot pepper.

  NINA

  Being left by her husband is bound to change a woman one way or another, to produce a kind of curvature of the emotional spine. For Nina the consequences of the divorce were a lack of trust in people that surprised even her, a fear of change and a mulish obstinacy. What is more she developed the habit of trying to keep warm by enveloping herself in heavy dressing gowns, fur jackets and shawls with tangled bobbles of wool. Wrapped up like this she would stew away like kasha in the oven, wallowing in the slow warmth, treasuring it, avoiding draughts and open doors for fear that they might bring something unpleasant.

  The break-up with her ex-husband had been unpleasant, quick and shattering. A friend ran in and asked if she knew where Zhenya was. Nina replied, where he always was — away on a business trip. The friend's eyes narrowed. «Oh, no he's not. I saw him today at the bus stop with a woman.»

  Nina was stunned. Although she did not confront him with it, he seemed to sense that she knew and deliberately got on her nerves by complaining every single day that he was fed nothing but fruit preserves. That she, Nina, was filling him with sticky-sweet apricot preserves. She thought he had said «killing» him. Then one day in a fury she spattered a whole jar of preserves all over the wall and he, mightily pleased with himself, went off never to be seen again. She was left with Vaska the black male rat that occasionally emerged from behind the cupboard to survey his domain, and her little daughter she had mindlessly given birth to by her fickle husband.

  Mindlessly, because at the sight of intellectual men Nina lost the ability to think straight although she was well aware how equivocal and evasive they could be in their dealings with women. You could never tell what they were after, whether it was you know what or not. Yet shivers ran down her spine at the sight of owlish spectacles and carefully washed pink hands accustomed to brushing everything aside. Particularly if he was wearing a long dressing gown and had a pipe in his hand. A sight like that was enough to make her grovel at his feet slavishly grateful for she knew not what. Nina would suddenly go dumb. Her silence was actually a challenge, a call for action, but action of what sort? How could she guess what he wanted? At this point, however, she preferred not to deliberate. Instead she relied on her own obstinacy to guide her onto the true path, like the torch on a miner's forehead.

  And here she was today, caught unawares like an idiot and quite unprepared. She couldn't have guessed from the telephone call that he would be like this. Instead of her pleated dress she was wearing an old green sweater with a wooden pipe-shaped ornament. And there he stood in his glasses, beret and casually belted raincoat. While he was looking through the folder of music she had decided to sell because it was cluttering up the study, she deftly removed the head from a salmon and garn
ished the fish with spring onions, oil and olives. Her miner's torch had switched full on, thank goodness. When he looked up from the music and saw the table had been laid, the visitor smiled happily, rubbed his hands and went out to get some beer.

  They took a long time over the meal, savouring each morsel, as if they were eating it for the first time. The fish was juicy, the beer just right, and they praised it lavishly, each saying they had the tastiest bit. He stretched out a hand over the table and touched the wooden pipe-shaped ornament on her breast — it was warm. His voice was silky from the yellow beer and artful.

  Nina did not respond at once. She had learnt from her husband to choose her words carefully, because he got quite exasperated if she picked the wrong one. Her idea of doing her daughter's hair in «sausage-curls» for a nursery-school parade provoked a reaction out of all proportion, which included the Young Family Encyclopaedia being hurled out of the window and threats to jump off the balcony. Nina remembered the incident because it was both funny and frightening. Her husband had also made her wary of questions beginning with «why» and «what for». Answers such as «the tram got held up», «I forgot my key» or «I changed my mind» produced a barrage of additional «whys» which confused her and made him tear his hair. No answer was ever any good. The best thing was to keep quiet and let it pass over. When you kept quiet you seemed more convincing and they left you alone.

  Nina pointed with her chin at a shelf with some unusually-shaped empty wine bottles. He took the hint with a big smile and went off to the Wine World shop, returning with two emerald green bottles. Nina reflected aloud that the wine would go down even better with a nice piece of meat.

  The meat hissed and sizzled in the deep frying pan. Faces flushed, they ate and drank themselves to a standstill and sat there blissfully replete from the life-giving juices.

  «I must be going. It's high time», he said sadly to the empty bottle.

  «High time,» it reverberated. The echo spun the words round lightly, turning them into a sad question, but he heard it and replied.

  «They'll be waiting for me.»

  «Waiting for you?» Nina's voice trailed off on its own grieving path. «Who's waiting?» Her voice was really unhappy now, and as before the visitor grasped everything with his inner ear.

  «Oh, my wife.» He had intended to say this lightly, but it came out quite differently. Evidently his wife was no laughing matter.

  «Your wife. Not for me. No one's waiting for me.» Her voice had really let itself go now, vibrating with a kind of greyish-green absinthial anguish.

  The visitor stood up, kissed Nina's onion-smelling hand meaningfully and bowed, while Nina blushed at the proximity of his barleycorn hair. Having taken his leave he sat down and reached for the bottle again, the full one this time, not the empty one.

  «Maybe it's not time after all?»

  «No, it isn't,» crowed Nina's detached voice.

  «No, it's not,» the visitor pronounced. «I can stay another hour or two. In fact I must.»

  Nina happily prepared some open sandwiches with sprats, topping the dead gold-flecked fish with thin slices of lemon. They had a few more drinks — they had been quite shattered by their recent parting and now they were invaded by a sense of mischief, prickly as fir needles.

  «So what's she like, your wife?» asked Nina brashly, not really expecting this to disconcert him. He was too chubby and cheerful for that, no sharp corners.

  «Fine. She's a skilled musician. Very intelligent.»

  «But is she nice?»

  «Eh? What did you say?»

  «Is she nice? Kind?» Nina suddenly got so agitated that she took a three-litre jar of fruit preserves firmly out of the fridge and started searching for the bottle opener in a state of complete and utter confusion, constantly reminding herself what she was looking for and what it looked like — a hammer and sickle, a hammer and sickle.

  «I wouldn't exactly say that,» he replied, uttering something he would normally have shrunk from saying. «I'd say she is a good person. But why do you ask?» Hearing no reply, he looked at her back. The back said everything she thought on the subject, and they seemed to agree — he and the eloquent back. He experienced a wild sense of relief when he said what he had wanted to say for a long time. But he also realised straightaway that this was a trap. For it was one thing when only you knew, but quite another when you shared the knowledge, and now the detached bit was demanding some appropriate behaviour from the non-detached bit. The detached bit was inescapable, there was no getting away from it. You can run away from something that hasn't been said, but once it's out they'll catch you and hand you the bill. You've said it now, so pay up!

  Reflecting thus, he unexpectedly fell asleep in the armchair, his thick round beard pointing upwards. Vaska the rat took advantage of the opportunity to come out and make sure there had not been a foreign invasion, but retired reassured — no aliens. You can escape uncomfortable thoughts by going to sleep, because although thoughts are stronger than man, man is more devious than thoughts. He has other ways of living as well.

  Nina also dozed on the divan. She dreamed of a sweet-smelling meadow with flowers, fluttering butterflies and humming insects. There were women in headscarves haymaking, men with pitchforks and a motorbike. But she slept lightly and kept getting up to put a small stool under his feet, cover him with a tartan blanket or simply feast her eyes on him. At one point he woke up and asked the time, then said he must go and went back to sleep. In the morning Nina examined him carefully. A bespectacled man without his glasses is irresistible, but doubly so when he is asleep, for he appeals to the maternal instinct as well. You could see how harmless he was, like a little child, with his damp eyelashes and fine blonde hair.

  Nina sighed and went down to the shop for some beer, then decided to get some fish, salted crackers, lemons, olives and ham. He woke up, lost and guilty, kissed her hand and said miserably, «I must be going.»

  «Have a beer before you go.»

  «Do you think I should?» he hesitated.

  «Yes. I do. What about you?»

  «I don't want to go, but I must.»

  «Must?» Nina's thoughtful eyes reproached him, and he began to wonder too — what for? In fact the question «what for?», if not understood superficially, in its everyday meaning, is a disturbing one, with a sting like a wasp. He didn't want to think. He just wanted to enjoy himself, without any dreary questions.

  The visitor went to have a shower and sang a few bars in an attractive, beery bass, then downed a mug of beer, cheered up and told Nina two very smutty stories about some friends of his.

  One of them, on tour in Alma-Ata, booked a double room in a hotel for himself and his friend. Then, also accompanied by his friend, he found a woman right there in the hotel, and the two of them made love to her together. But the thin, sallow-faced creature turned out to have an appetite for men as voracious as a refuse-disposal unit and kept complaining «more», «more», «no good», «no good», which absolutely paralysed them. Eventually the exhausted hero could bear it no longer and told her to clear off. She wouldn't. He threatened to call the manager, at which she screeched in a real fury that she was the manager and that as of now they were no longer staying there, because hotels were not for… At this point he trailed off.

  The second story was no better. One evening a friend of his was offered a girl in a restaurant, a real good looker in high heels. They retired to his room and everything seemed fine, until she went off to the bathroom to get undressed. What emerged was a completely naked creature with the most obscene blue prison tattoos all over except on her hands and feet. This monster sat down on the arm of the chair, ran her hand through the poor man's greying hair and cooed: «My little silver fox.» Next morning his colleagues found him in a hotel on the other side of town.

  Nina resisted the desire to laugh. Because people sometimes misunderstand and think you are laughing at them. So she just said «poor chap» and saw from his face that she had hit the nail
on the head. All men are poor chaps if you think about it. She had always thought so at least. But you mustn't give way to them too much or you will be even poorer. Actually she had enjoyed it. She always liked hearing how people had been disappointed, and feeling sympathetic and sorry for them. She liked to feel involved. And these stories, although silly and smutty, were about people being disappointed.

  It was while Nina was feeling sympathetic that things began to happen. He finally put his hand on her knee. Casually, absent-mindedly, as if nothing special was going on. Without looking at her, he stared pensively at the ceiling. Then the hand was removed. Nina shifted very slightly towards him, also absentmindedly, as if nothing special was going on. Then he put his hand back on her knee and inched his way up very slowly. Nina watched as the light material of her Indian skirt was raised and gathered into folds like a window blind, revealing more and more white skin, and at last, unable to restrain herself any longer, opened her legs wide and threw back her head, arching her neck.

  They dressed afterwards and went out into the raw cold wind to buy a bottle of brandy. Nina fried some meat with potatoes and spices, while he watched in silence, his arms round her waist. She did not need to be told that everything was right between them. From raw to cooked, from hard to soft, from strange to familiar. That's the way it goes. Not only in the frying pan. They ate and drank leisurely with relish.

  «A museum needs a curator,» he said. «A teacher should have a pupil, a nurse a patient and a railway engine a driver. A key needs a lock and vice versa. That's the way things are, and praise or blame don't come into it.»