by Maxim Osipov
“How would you like it if a woman gave you a Jaguar?”
He’d have to think about that, yes . . . He closes his eyes, and she prattles on—about her ex-boyfriend’s disgusting habits, the restaurants he took her to, the cigars he smoked.
Oh, he has an idea: this ought to stem her eloquent tide.
“A woman is only a woman,” he says in English, “but a good Cigar is a Smoke.”
But the neighbor just nods, unperturbed: “Kipling.”
She knows the poem. She studied “creative writing” at Princeton. Anyway, this Kipling used to buy her cars, but he refused to have children. The radical measure of sterilization is fairly common in the United States. Kipling had a vasectomy, and now she herself is too old to conceive.
That’s why she’s flying to Russia—to adopt a girl. Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania—the few places left where you can find an orphan of European descent. He looks at his neighbor with new eyes.
She extends her hand: “My name is Jean.”
He gives Jean his name and sees a slight change in her expression. A half smile—not mysterious, exactly. Will she say it? Of course she’ll say it. No, she keeps mum.
“Tell me—it was your dog’s name, wasn’t it? Your cat’s?”
“My hamster’s,” Jean confesses.
How sweet. They both laugh.
She tells him about the process of adoption. There will be a court hearing. She shows him a photo of the little girl, eleven months old. There’s a lawyer waiting in Moscow. They’ll travel to Novosibirsk together. Everything has been arranged, even a Russian nanny. Why a Russian nanny? “What do you mean, why? The girl’s only heard Russian her whole life.”
There’s one thing Jean hasn’t arranged. She asks him to fill out her customs declaration, and it turns out one can’t bring in more than ten thousand dollars on one’s person. Jean brought a bigger sum with her. Well, there are two options: either hide the money deeper, or entrust some of it to him. He’d wait for her at the glass doors; he has no luggage.
“Of course I trust you . . .” she says, somewhat abstractedly.
So she doesn’t trust him, but she really has no other choice. He takes her money: Don’t worry, Jean. That’s the end of their conversation. They both need sleep.
The plane flies over Tver. There are no clouds. He lets her look out the window: See the wretchedness? He’s no longer with Jean. When he exits the plane and the customs inspectors ask, “What are you traveling with?” he’ll wave his hand and say: “All kinds of crap.” They’ll smile the best they can—one of ours, on you go. Jean and he will say their goodbyes at the glass doors; friendships struck up in airplanes don’t usually develop, but they’ll exchange phone numbers, addresses. He’ll get in his car and his mind will again turn to his father. For some reason, car trips give him a fleeting sense of reunion. He’ll drive into the city—which is aggressive, barbaric on weekdays, and not so bad, more or less familiar on weekends—and make his way to Manezhnaya Square. A decade ago, the traffic around the square was two-way, now it’s one-way—he’ll have to tell his father about that too.
•
He really does arrive at Sheremetyevo; he gets behind the wheel, turns around, and slams his front bumper against a concrete pedestal: it’s exactly tall enough not to be noticed. Shit. Greetings, Mother Russia. Every penny he’d earned on the legless old woman—down the drain. The material losses cause him less distress than usual, although the bumper is cracked and some slush from under the hood drips onto the asphalt. He dips his finger into it—green: radiator fluid. The engine is overheating: God forbid it should jam. In the city center, at a traffic light, he turns off the engine. He closes his eyes—no dream this time, almost a dead faint. The honking behind him is deafening. He’s not going home—he’s going to the mechanic.
He’s got an excellent mechanic who doesn’t overcharge—doesn’t overcharge him, at any rate—and immediately diagnoses the problem; he graduated from a technical college. Well, in this case, you don’t need a degree to understand what happened. The mechanic condescends to him a bit: poor little intellectual, doesn’t know what real life’s all about, and doesn’t need to know. He takes a part from another client’s car, grumbling—“a French turd”—about his Renault. “Shurik!” he calls to one of his assistants. “Shurik!”
The place employs Kyrgyz—no, not Kyrgyz—what do you call them?—Uighurs, without registration. They call them all Shurik. Like the mechanic himself, they never leave the shop.
The radio blasts awful so-called music. Dirt everywhere. Oil, rags, tools underfoot. Disassembled engines, doors, wheel arches, fenders: man is much more perfectly made than any car, especially on the inside.
“Are rats a problem in here?” He’s afraid of rats.
“Nope,” the mechanic reassures him. “No rats yet—but they’re coming.” The cat that lived here croaked last week.
Where should he perch himself? He doesn’t want to get in the way, breathe down their necks. He finds a place in the farthest corner, in a collapsed car seat. The mechanic curses a blue streak, with various filigrees, pretentiously, shouting over the radio—only intellectuals curse that way. He puts on his headphones—Mendelssohn, a fragment of the second trio, Mendelssohn has two of them—and suddenly realizes that he’s happy.
How can he manage to stay in this state? He knows that, in the best of cases, it will last a few minutes and then dissipate. It’s useless to try to hold on to it. The very attempt signals its failure.
But somehow it lasts. Is it the music?
No, the music is over, but he’s still happy.
April 2010
Translated by Boris Dralyuk
ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
THE TIME: ours. A peaceful life. Small town, Central Russia, away from railways and the highway. There is a river, there is a church.
Ksenia Nikolayevna Knysh’s house is in the center of town. It’s a bungalow, but a large one. The pelmennaya—the dumpling restaurant by the house—belongs to her too. Ksenia is head of the region’s legislative assembly. She is fifty-seven years old.
Morning, Tuesday, March 7. Ksenia is on her front porch with Mrs. Pakhomova, principal of the local school. Pakhomova is holding a large, personalized card and a bouquet of yellow flowers.
“Dearest Ksenia Nikolayevna! As it’s Women’s Day tomorrow we wanted to offer you our sincere, heartfelt thanks and our very warmest wishes. May your work continue to benefit this town for many years to come!”
Ksenia nods, doesn’t invite her in. There are some sheets of paper inside the card.
“After money again, Pakhomova?”
“Whatever do you mean? Those are your neighbor’s sacred writings—they were on the computer in the staff room. But please don’t show them to anyone, dear Ksenia Nikolayevna, you know what people here are like . . .”
Ksenia, sternly:
“We’ll look into it.”
But she smiles all the same: “Happy Women’s Day, Pakhomova. To all of you—all of the women on your team.” Then back inside her house, to read. This neighbor is an enemy. Pray for your enemies. She does pray, she prays every single day. . .
I am forty years old, and I feel good, but after forty, death is no longer seen as premature—so it’s time for me to get myself together, put it all into words. These thoughts—nagging, unresolved . . . Forty. Faith in humanity dwindles, and—by the same token—faith in God. What’s all this for, what? It’s as though I’m sitting backwards on a train, looking out the window. And out there: the past. All I see is the past. What is turning forty, if not a reason to make sense of my past?
I am a teacher of Russian language and literature; I am unmarried; I have no children. My whole life—except that time at Kalinin University (an ugly dream, now forgotten)—has been lived in this town of ours. It’s beautiful here; a joyless, Central Russian sort of beauty. If you ignore everything man-made, it’s very beautiful indeed. So here I am, apparently forever: here I was born; here I’l
l die. When I was younger this thought depressed me, but not anymore. Of course, my life can feel a bit lonely, especially in winter, when it gets dark by five, and all of a sudden you lose sight of the things that help make life feel full: the river, the trees, the neighbors’ houses. There’s no risk of me turning to alcohol, mind you—I can’t stand the stuff—but writing I have tried, as I think, in my position, almost anyone would. They’re in for a shock when they read it—such are the sources of my “work.” But whom will it actually shock? A couple of male teachers—that’s all the intelligentsia we have here. Our doctors, our priest, they can hardly be considered intelligentsia, and the women at school are all featureless beings, usually married to some low-level official. They have a burdened look about them. “What’s earth’s diameter?” the geography teacher will ask the children. “Don’t you know? That’s no good,” he’ll say, “earth is our mother.” He’s been doing this same act for the last twenty years, but no one—not even we teachers—has bothered to find out the answer. Why should we? We’re not going anywhere; earth doesn’t feel round to us. He’s dying of cancer anyway: everyone knows everyone else’s business here, especially when it’s bad.
“First I’ll do my time in the army, then I’ll do my time inside.” That’s what a village boy told me wistfully not long ago—he and I were discussing his future. An apprenticeship, is that what it’s called? Hardly any of my first male students who graduated are still alive: drugs, war, “ business” . . . this upset me at first, but now—much as it pains me to say it—I’m tired, tired of pity. I’ve gotten used to these things. As for the girls, in general they get through unscathed; each year a few of them go on to universities and academies in Tver, Yaroslavl, even Moscow. Girls are more interested in books anyway, and as people, they’re eager to please: after all, I’m a single, relatively young man; we organize literature evenings together; I have a big house . . . We call our evenings Literary Thursdays—all very innocent: tea, poetry, prose. I like to feel happy, and to make others feel happy, too. And even that wretched, utterly wretched business with Verochka Zhidkova hasn’t dampened my spirits.
We have a river, but no railway—not for many kilometers around. They say this prevents industrial development here, but railways are really just an evil, an unfreedom. How Tolstoy despised the railway—and how the Bolsheviks loved it! “Our brave locomotive, steaming forth” and the like. But a braking distance of one and a half kilometers—is that some kind of joke? Now, cars, that’s another story. Oh, how I wish I had one! As for driving, I’d figure that out somehow. Then I’d get behind the wheel and drive to Pushkinskiye Gory, even Boldino, and spend hours wandering around these sacred Pushkinian sites, and there, look! Another teacher, and she’s single and lonely too. Sometimes I lie awake at night, scripting my conversations with her. Is that childish? So be it. “How are you enjoying your visit?” I’ll ask her. She won’t answer in a direct way, but in a way that shows she loves Pushkin as much as I do. Soon I’ll confess: “I loved you from the moment I saw you.” Or perhaps not quite so forward as that, but something along those lines. Then she’ll start laughing, as though she doesn’t believe me. “It’s true, I swear,” I’ll say. “Swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth,” she’ll mutter with a frown, but I’ll have the last word: “Nor by the joyful name of Pushkin.” After seeing the sights, we’ll drive back to my place, without any long discussions or agreements. On the way we’ll play a game: I’ll say, “The tale of tales,” and she’ll reply, “The book of books.” I’ll continue:
“The king of kings.”
“Nation of nations.”
“Vanity of vanities.”
“Holy of Holies.”
“Crème de la crème.”
And then she’ll think for a while, and give up.
There’s no shortage of things we could play, but I am very much short a car. If I were a bit more on the ball, I’d sell half my land (I have a large plot where, weeds aside, almost nothing grows), then I’d rebuild the house, buy a car, and still have money to spare. Land here is worth fifty times what it was just a few years ago, so I’m set for life, only I don’t know how to deal with this wealth. To be completely honest, I haven’t really tried all that hard: Poverty is quite becoming of a provincial teacher, isn’t it? My life here has warmth. And danger, and dirt, and a whiff of . . . yes, certain aspects of our provincial life stink—of course they do—but let’s not drag out this metaphor.
I have amazing parents. That village student of mine (time in the army—time inside) doesn’t. It’s a rough life: from childhood, he’ll steal from shops—not out of hunger, but to prove something. Or he’ll get drunk, get into a fight—who are we to judge? And if he rapes one of his classmates? If he kills someone? At what point is a child responsible for his actions—if ever?
Just before New Year’s I found a boy at the bus station; he was about six, poorly clothed for winter. He came up to me to beg, for what I assume must have been the first time: he still didn’t know how it was done. I took him with me to the New Year’s show at one of the dachas. We washed the boy, dressed him, gave him all sorts of gifts, and then I took him back to his place. He pointed out their “apartment,” but when I went inside it was just a room—and some room it was: empty, save for a light bulb hanging from the ceiling and an iron bed covered in rags, and on top of that lay a naked man, dirty, drunk, reeking. I covered the guy up, then tried to make him see—see his son, see this bag of things we had given him, see that he needed some order in his life, but he just asked: “You Orthodox?” This threw me—what sort of question was that? Then he sat up, heaving himself towards me: “You a real Russian?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I’m Russian.”
“So then what do you need all these things, all this order, for? See, me, I don’t need no-thing.”
But why not? He seemed even to have surprised himself. I met his son again the next day at the bus station. He didn’t recognize me, but recounted his story excitedly: “You should’ve seen the house I was at yesterday! Them Muscovites stay there! They sure are good at stealing!”
That’s the kids. As for the adults, they’ve completely lost the plot too. For example, barely anyone can remember our local phone code: we never give our numbers out to anyone outside of town; we don’t feel part of a bigger whole. Buddha, Socrates, Tolstoy, and then me: resident of town X, with phone number Y—that’s how things should be. The profound depths of the Russian national consciousness? Nowadays it’s only the dacha owners who believe in things like that; the locals just watch TV. Not out of exhaustion, and not because life is tough—it’s easy; no one’s going hungry—but to fill that void, to keep themselves busy somehow.
Now, back to my own situation. My parents are alive, both retired—my father taught English, my mother was a primary-school teacher. They didn’t get any grandchildren from me, so they moved to Moscow. They have theaters there, exhibitions, my younger sister lives there too. My parents love each other and my sister and me. I never really went in for any sort of teenage rebellion when I was growing up. People say a youth without rebellion is incomplete, but I don’t agree.
Anyway, my whole family is alive, so of all my losses, losing Verochka was the greatest; in fact, the only genuine loss I’ve suffered. Three years have passed since we lost her, yet I still remember her every single day—perhaps even every hour. Not to mention every time I come across intelligent, animated girls—which some of my students are. One just recently asked me: “Sir, since our punctuation rules are so rigid, perhaps we don’t need to use punctuation at all? It’s not like it says anything we didn’t already know.” Why had this question never occurred to me? “I need to think about that,” I told her, “I need to think about that.” It’s clever little girls like these that get me to work in the morning.
To finish what I was saying about the dacha owners: not long before Verochka left here, she and I were sitting on the veranda, helping one of my graduating students, Polina, write an
entrance-exam essay for some third-rate university. It was the Academy of Services, and apparently they’ll take anyone they can get: they don’t even take students’ phones from them during exams. So Verochka and I sat there drinking tea and trying to outdo each other with text messages to Polina in the exam hall. The essay title was “The Spiritual World of the Provincial Nobility in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.” The assumption was that Polina would develop each of the ideas we texted her.
And so we wrote:
“This world is presented from chapter two of the novel to the beginning of chapter seven. It is to this world that Onegin flees from the big city, from Saint Petersburg.” We then continued:
“Unpretentious naivete of Onegin’s provincial neighbors:
Into that very room he settled,
Where, forty years, till his demise,
With housekeeper the old man battled,
Looked through the window, swatted flies . . .3
“Interests:
Their sensible deliberations
Regarding haymaking, the wine,
The kennels and their kith and kind . . .
“Country dwellers—characterized by simplicity, unrefined interests, monotonous existence. Brought together by habit, not love.
“Unstructured days, lots of free time:
Alone Tatiana roams within
The silent woods, armed with a novel
In which she seeks and finds some marvel . . .
“For the passionate, a world of illusions blossoms:
She breathes a sigh and, taking over
Another’s grief or ecstasy. . .