She returned for a moment to the compartment and shut her eyes to the dazzling light. Her mother was talking and laughing with the fat man. Seryozha was sliding back and forth on the red plush seat, holding on to a leather strap fastened to, the wall. Her mother spat out the last fruit pulp into her hand, swept away the pips that had fallen on her dress, leaned over lithely and tossed the debris under the seat. The fat man, contrary to all expectation, had a hoarse, cracked voice. He obviously suffered from asthma. Her mother introduced Zhenya to him, and he gave her a tangerine. He was comical and probably good-natured. Time and again he raised his pudgy hand to his mouth when he spoke. His voice rose, suddenly sounded strained and was abruptly cut off. It turned out that he lived in Yekaterinburg, had traveled all over the Urals and knew them very well. When he took his gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket, held it close to his nose and put it back, Zhenya saw that he had good-natured fingers. Like all fat men he did things with an air, as though he were giving them away, and his hand sighed all the time, as if offered for a kiss, and swayed softly in the air, as if it were bouncing a ball on the ground. “It will soon be here,” he murmured and turned his squinting gaze away from Seryozha, at whom he had just glanced, and smiled broadly.
“You know, the frontier post between Asia and Europe. Asia is written on it,” bubbled Seryozha. He slid quickly from his seat and ran into the corridor.
Zhenya didn’t understand what he meant, and when the fat man tried to explain it to her, she, too, ran out to wait for the signpost; she was afraid that she had already missed it. In her bewitched head the “frontier of Asia” became a fantastic borderline, like the iron bars which establish a danger zone between the public and a cage full of mountain lions, a zone as black as night and smelling of danger. She waited for this post as for the raising of the curtain on the first act of a geographical tragedy of which she had heard fabulous things from people who had seen it; she felt triumphant because now she would see it with her own eyes.
Meanwhile, the monotony which had driven her back to the grownups in the compartment, returned. The gray alders, which they had been passing for half an hour, seemed endless, and nature appeared to be making no preparations for what was about to happen. Zhenya was annoyed with boring, dusty Europe, which lazily delayed the appearance of the miracle. And how startled she was when, almost simultaneously with Seryozha’s wild cry, something like a tombstone flitted by the window, turned its other side to them and carried off the longed-for, fairy-tale name deep into the pursuing alders. As if by previous agreement, countless heads shot out of the windows of the compartments of all classes, while a cloud of dust swirled around the train, which was whizzing down a slope. It had already traveled dozens of miles into Asia, but kerchiefs still fluttered over darting heads, and clean-shaven and bearded faces still looked out as they flew along on clouds of sound, past the dusty alders which had been European a short time ago but were now Asiatic.
4
A new life began. The milk was not brought to the house and into the kitchen by a milkwoman; Ulyasha brought it in every morning in two pails attached to a yoke. The rolls, too, tasted different from those at Penn. The pavements looked like marble or alabaster, with a wavy, white shine. The stones dazzled one in the shade like icy suns and greedily swallowed the shadows of the elegant trees which grew overhead, melting and dissolving them. One had a different feeling walking the streets here, which were light and broad, tree-lined as in Paris, Zhenya would say, parroting her father.
He had said that the day they arrived. It was a beautiful, clear day. Having breakfasted before coming to the station to meet them, he did not take the midday meal with them. He merely sat down with them, spread out his napkin, and brought them up to date. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, his hero’s breast swelling stiffly and powerfully. He said Yekaterinburg was a beautiful European town, then rang the bell for the course to be taken away and a new one brought in. A girl in white came noiselessly over unknown paths from unknown rooms, a brunette, all stiffly starched pleats and ruffles. Mr. Luvers addressed her in the formal second personal plural. She smiled at the lady and the children as if they were old acquaintances. She was given certain instructions for Ulyasha, who was in the unknown kitchen, where there surely must be a window through which one could see something new: perhaps a bell tower or a street or birds. And having put on her oldest clothes and unpacked, Ulyasha would surely ask this new girl many questions, in order to find her way around the kitchen—such as in which corner the hearth stood, whether the same as in Perm or in another.
Mr. Luvers told Seryozha that it was only a few steps to the high school, it was quite near by. They had seen it on their way to the house. Their father drank some mineral water, swallowed and continued: “Didn’t I show it to you? You can’t see it from here, perhaps from the kitchen.” He thought it over. “But only the roof.” He took another swallow of mineral water and rang the bell.
The kitchen was cool and light, just as Zhenya had imagined it in the dining room; the blue-white tiles sparkled, and there were two windows, arranged as she had imagined they would be. Ulyasha threw something over her exposed arms. They heard children’s voices from outside and saw people walking on the roof of the high school and just the top of a scaffolding. “Yes, they are making repairs,” explained their father as they returned noisily, in single file, to the dining room. They passed through the already known but yet unexplored corridor, which Zhenya vowed to explore more thoroughly tomorrow when she had unpacked her schoolbooks, hung up her clothes and attended to a thousand other things.
“Excellent butter,” said their mother as she sat down. The children went into the schoolroom, which they had already briefly inspected on their arrival, caps still on their heads. “What is this Asia?” Zhenya reflected aloud. But Seryozha failed to understand what he surely would have understood at any other time, for until now they had lived in the same world. He ran to the map on the wall, drew his hand up and down the ridge of the Urals and looked at his sister, who he thought should be convinced by this demonstration. “They agreed upon a natural frontier, that’s all.”
She thought of today’s noon hour, already so far in the past. It was incredible that this day, which already contained so much—the same day that was now in Yekaterinburg and was still here—was not yet over. At thought of all this withdrawing to a certain distance, yet still maintaining its breathless order, she felt a strange weariness in her soul, a feeling that the body has on the evening of a day heavy with work. It was as if she had helped in moving these heavy, beautiful things and had overstrained herself. And somehow convinced that they—the Urals—were there, she turned and ran into the kitchen, passing through the dining room, where there were now fewer dishes but the “excellent” iced butter on wet maple leaves and the irritating mineral water still remained.
The high school was being repaired and shrill swallows tore the air, as a seamstress tears linen with her teeth, while below—she leaned out of the window—a coach gleamed before the open coachhouse, sparks flew from a whetstone, and there was a smell of leftover food, so much better and more interesting a smell than that of freshly prepared food. It was a long-drawn, melancholy odor, as in a book. She forgot why she was standing there and failed to notice that her Urals were not in Yekaterinburg. Then she noticed that it was gradually growing darker and that the people on the floor below were singing, probably while doing housework. Perhaps they had washed the floors and were now spreading the bast mats with their warm hands. She also heard water spilling into pails below, and yet how quiet it was all around. She heard a faucet dripping and the call, “Well, now, miss!” but she was still shy of the new girl and she didn’t want to hear her. And now—she thought her thought to its end—the people below must be saying, “The people on the second floor have arrived.” Then Ulyasha came into the kitchen.
The children slept deeply the first night and they woke up, Seryozha in Yekaterinburg, Zhenya in Asia, as it seemed to her with a strange c
ertainty. White alabaster ornaments were playing on the ceiling.
It was still summer when it started. It was explained to her that she would go to high school, and this only pleased her. It was not she who called the tutor into the schoolroom, where sunlight stuck so fast to the distempered walls that, when evening came, the tenaciously clinging day could be torn off only with bloodshed. She had not called for him when he arrived, accompanied by her mother, to be introduced “to his future pupil.” Did she by any chance wish that soldiers must always exercise in the noonday beat, giant, panting soldiers, with sweat like the red stuff that comes from the faucet of a damaged water main? She did not wish that a violet storm cloud, which knows more of guns and artillery than of white shirts, white tents and even whiter officers, should ease off their boots. Had she by any chance prayed that two things, a bowl and a napkin, should be combined like the carbon elements of an are lamp and produce a third thing that turned in a flash into steam: the idea of death? It was while looking at the emblem of barbershops that this idea had first come to her. And did the red barricades, with the notice of “No Standing Here,” become, perhaps, with her consent a place of hidden secrets, and the Chinese turn into something terrible that terrified Zhenya personally? Not everything weighed so heavily upon her soul. Much was beautiful, for instance her forthcoming attendance at high school. But when everything was explained to her, life ceased to be a poetic whim; it billowed around her like a gloomy, dark tale and became hard, factual prose. Dull, painful and dim, like a state of perpetual sobering up, the elements of the day’s routine fell into her awakening soul. They sank to the bottom, real, hard and cold, like sleepy tin spoons. There, in the depths, the tin began to melt, became lumpy and turned into pressing thoughts.
5
The Belgians came often to tea. That’s what they were called. That’s what their father called them when he said, “The Belgians are coming today.” There were four of them. The beardless one came rarely and was less talkative. Sometimes he came alone, by accident, in the middle of the week and chose an ugly, rainy day for his visit. The other three were inseparable. Their faces, scented and cool, reminded one of fresh pieces of soap, just unwrapped. One of them had a thick, fluffy beard and soft, chestnut-brown hair. They always came with Mr. Luvers from some conference. Everyone in the house liked them. They spoke as if they were sprinkling water on the tablecloth—noisily, briskly, with sudden twists that nobody expected. Their jokes and anecdotes, clean and satisfying, were always understood by the children.
Noise was everywhere, everything flashed—the sugar bowl, the nickel coffeepot, the strong white teeth, the heavy linen. With Mrs. Luvers they joked pleasantly and courteously. As her husband’s colleagues, they knew how to restrain him when he made ponderous replies, to their allusions to people only they, as experts, really knew. Haltingly and long-windedly, in bad French, Mr. Luvers told stories of contractors, of “références approuvées” and of “férocités,” that is “bestialités, ce qui veut dire en russe, embezzlements, in Blagodat.”
The beardless one, who had been eagerly learning Russian for some time, often tried himself out in this new territory, but it wouldn’t bear his weight as yet. It was improper to laugh over the French sentences of their father, whose “férocités” were embarrassing to the children, but the laughter that drowned out Negarat’s experiments in Russian seemed to be justified by the situation itself.
His name was Negarat. He was a Walloon from the Flemish part of Belgium. They recommended Dikikh, Zhenya’s tutor, to him. He wrote down the address in Russian and made very comic pictures of complicated letters like “yu, ya, yat!” They looked as if they were double, these letters, as if they stood straddle-legged. The children let themselves kneel on the leather seats of the chairs and lean their elbows on the table—everything was allowed when the Belgians were there, everything was higgledy-piggledy. The letter “yu” was not a “yu” but a figure too. They all shouted and shook with laughter. Evans hit the table with his fist and wiped away his tears. Their father walked up and down the room, shaking and red-faced, saying over and over, “No, I can’t go on,” and crumpled his handkerchief in his hand. Evans added fuel to the fire: “Faîtes de nouveau! Commencez!” Negarat timidly opened his mouth, as if fearful of stuttering, and considered how to pronounce the Russian “yery,” still as unexplored as the colonies along the Congo. “Dites: uvy-nevy-godno,” their father proposed to him in a hoarse, choking voice. “Ouivoui, nievoui….”
“Entends-tu? Ouvoui, nievoui—ouvoui, nievoui—oui, oui—chose inouie—charmant!” the Belgians shouted, rocking with laughter. The summer was gone. The exams were passed, some even with distinction. The cold, transparent noise in the school corridors flowed as if from a well. Here everybody knew each other. The leaves in the garden turned yellow and gold. The school windows tormented themselves with their bright, dancing reflection. Half of milk glass, they darkened and their lower parts shook. The upper panes quivered in a blue cramp. Bronze maple brandies furrowed their cold clarity.
She had not expected that all her excitement would turn into such a lighthearted joke. Divide so many ells and inches by seven! Was it worth while to learn all these “dols, zolotniks, lots, pounds and poods?” The grams, drams, somples and ounces, which always seemed to her like the four ages of the scorpion? Why does one write “polezno” with an “e” and not with a “yat”? The answer was so difficult for her only because she strained her imagination to envisage why a “yat” should suddenly appear in the middle of a word, although it made the spelling look so wild and unkempt. And her coffeebrown school uniform, cut out but still held together with pins, was fitted to her for hours. And her room already held many new horizons: school satchel, pen case, lunchbox and a remarkably repulsive eraser.
II. The Stranger
1
The little girl was wrapped from head to knee in a thick woolen muffler and ran about the yard like a chicken. Zhenya wanted to go to the Tartar girl and speak to her. And at that moment a casement window flew open. “Kol’ka!” Aksinya called. The child, who looked like a peasant’s bundle with felt boots hastily attached, ran into the porter’s quarters.
To take schoolwork into the yard always meant brooding so long over some comment on a rule that it lost all sense, with the result that one had to return home and start all over again. On the very doorstep, the rooms began to weave their spell, with their special twilight, their coolness and their always surprising familiarity; it emanated from the furniture standing in its proper place for all time. The future could not be foreseen, but it could be seen when one stepped into the house from outside. Here its plan was made evident—the distribution of those forces to which it would be subjected. And there was no dream blown in by the of the yard, between the porter’s lodge and the coachhouse, bordered on somebody else’s garden.
Zhenya went to the place where the firewood was stacked. She wedged a flat log under the ladder which leaned against it to prevent it from slipping, and sat, uncomfortable and strained, as if in a game, on one of the middle rungs. Then she got up, climbed higher, put the book on the top step and attempted to deal with the “Demon.” Then she discovered that it was more comfortable sitting below and made her way down, leaving the book on the woodpile, without noticing it—because it was just then that she discovered something on the other side of the garden that she had never suspected. As if under a spell, she stood open-mouthed.
In the strange garden there were no bushes, and the ancient trees, stretching their lower branches through the foliage as into dark night, sheltered the garden beneath, which lay in a constant, solemn but airy twilight, from which it never emerged. The branches were forked, painted violet by the weather, covered with gray lichens, and left open a view of an empty, little-used street on the other side of the garden. There a yellow acacia stood. Its leaves were now dry, shrunken and falling.
Transformed by the dusky garden from this world into another, the empty side street shone like an event
in a dream, very bright, sullen and still, as if the sun, with spectacles on its nose, were rummaging in a crowfoot.
What then made Zhenya open her mouth in wonder? A discovery that interested her far more than the people who helped her make it Was there a small shop…? Behind the garden gate… In such a street… “The happy ones”… She envied the unknown women. They were three.
They were black, like the word “nun” in the song. Three symmetrical necks bowed under round hats. The outermost one, half-concealed by a bush, was leaning on something and seemed to be asleep. The other two, nestling tightly against her, were also asleep. The hats were blue-black, they shimmered in the sun and then went out, like fireflies. They were entwined with black crepe. At this moment, the unknown women turned their heads and looked in another direction. Something at the far end of the street had obviously attracted their attention. They stared that way for a minute, as one stares in the summer when the light dissolves a second and draws it out, when one blinks and has to protect one’s eyes with a hand—they stared for a moment, and then sank back into their former state of sleepy immobility.
Zhenya wanted to go into the house, but she missed her book and could not remember immediately where she had left it. Then she went to fetch it and when she reached the woodpile she saw that the unknown women had moved and were about to leave. They walked in Indian file to the garden gate. A small man with the peculiar gait of the lame followed them. He carried under his arm a gigantic album or atlas. So that was what had occupied their attention when they were looking over each other’s shoulders and she had thought they were asleep! The strangers walked through the garden and disappeared behind the farm buildings. The sun set. Zhenya reached for her book and slipped on the logs. The woodpile woke up and moved as if it were alive. A few logs slid down and fell onto the grass with a quiet bump. This was the sign, like the nightwatchman’s tap with the door knocker. The evening was born. From the other side of the river the air whistled an old tune.
The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers Page 3