by Maxim Osipov
“But where am I going to go?” Puryzhensky asks suddenly, still not looking at anyone.
“You’re not going. Stay here.” Father Sergius doesn’t notice the nurse signaling at him. “Stay. Maya Pavlovna will forgive you.”
•
Again the dim light, the monitors beeping out of sync: for every two beats of the priest’s heart the writer’s heart beats three or four times. Both listen to the beeps, noticing the moments when they coincide.
“I should write about this, all of it.” Puryzhensky’s breathing really isn’t good.
“And you will.”
“It’s too late. Don’t you think I know?” He falls silent. Breathes. “If only you’d seen her trying to warm up the old woman!”
He’s in a bad way, he says. Hopeless. He won’t be writing anything.
“And what isn’t written doesn’t exist. Like it never happened. Can’t you see?”
Father Sergius can see very clearly: he prefers reading above all else.
“Is that so,” the writer says indifferently. “I’d imagined something different, a hiking group, songs . . . Do you write any poetry?”
“With a last name like mine you can’t write anything but poetry.”
“What is it?”
“Tyutchev.”11
For the first time that night they both laugh, quietly.
“You know, a long time ago I wrote something along the lines of a poem . . . When I parted company with a certain group. Which just so happened to be a group of hikers. Or, more accurately, they parted company with me.” Father Sergius reaches into the bedside table for his notebook, waits for Puryzhensky to ask him to read. “I’ve never shown this to anyone.” He’s still waiting. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I’m waiting.”
There’s nothing to do. He must read.
We went barefoot around the house
For we were the children of our time,
We were sentimental,
Loved simple poems, meaningless and sweet,
Gave sympathy one-sidedly,
We were good in misfortune, we were bad at joy,
We were adept at practical matters,
We knew AC from DC, we could assemble
A canoe, a tent, solidly, surely.
At first we did not believe in God,
There was plenty to disturb us:
About Isaac and Abraham,
The gilding in the church.
Then suddenly we believed,
Began living almost righteously,
Or else our emotions receded.
What am I talking about all this for?
Rucksacks were still made of aluminum,
Or duralumin, or I don’t know, titanium,
Lightweight and very convenient
For moving house, for moving heavy loads.
We knew how to carry things, boxes, heavy loads,
How to help out when moving house, and at funerals,
To go after passes, hold a place in a line,
We helped more or less, after a fashion,
To the extent that we felt this to be right.
Their kindness was a priori,
Of course it went without saying,
But the way they spoke of people was vile,
They were the children of their time,
They loved Alexander Grin,
The film Stalker, songs by Vysotsky,
Children of the Arbat, watching Dolls on TV,
Conversations with Joseph Brodsky,
These days there’s nothing they really like.
What conclusions can be drawn from this?
Not to fall captive to objective qualities,
Not to fear sentimentality,
Not to be taken in by a first impression.
“Is that all?” asks Puryzhensky after a pause. “Something’s missing at the end.”
The priest picks up his pen and adds:
Remember: nobody has the right
To a neighbor’s love.
The last two lines he doesn’t read out loud.
•
He slept. Not for long, but he had obviously slept soundly because when he awakes and realizes where he is, he notices big changes in both his surroundings and the light. It’s morning, and the overhead light has gone out. Besides that, the dividing screen has been pushed right up to his bed, and the ventilation unit is shining through it as it noisily pumps air. Worst of all, tubes are sticking out of his neighbor’s mouth and he’s unconscious.
Maya Pavlovna enters.
“Has the pain come back? No? Then get your things and go to examination room number two.”
“Maya Pavlovna . . .” He wants to ask about Puryzhensky.
“It can wait until later.”
In the examination room she takes a lead with adhesive strips at one end and attaches them to Father Sergius’s chest, then presses the buttons on an enormous machine that occupies the middle of the room—a treadmill he’s supposed to walk on. They’re short of nurses, she says, and adds something else that requires no answer. Towards morning Maya Pavlovna looks more like the lady docs, those worn-out female doctors Father Sergius has come across before.
They begin. At first it will be easy, then get harder and harder.
His neighbor isn’t doing well, says Maya Pavlovna. Sergey Petrovich should concentrate on his walking and not get distracted, otherwise it will throw his breathing off.
The conveyor beneath his feet is going a little faster. He carries on walking. For now he’s just fine.
“Maya Pavlovna to ICU! It’s urgent!”
She rushes off. Either she’s expecting to come right back or she’s forgotten to stop the treadmill. Father Sergius now carries on by himself. The incline is getting steeper, and the treadmill is going faster. Every few minutes the cuff on his arm inflates, then deflates, and a cardiogram pops out of the machine. He carries on walking.
Father Sergius has begun to sweat, especially his head. It’s no longer enough to walk, he must run. His legs are aching—it’s all right, they’ll get a break—and he’s trying to catch his breath, his heart’s pounding hard and fast, his sweat dripping onto the conveyor—it’s hot like a fiery furnace, but—he must keep on going, keep on going, go even further! There must be a cable he can pull and bring it all to a stop, but while he can, he’ll carry on. He must. For some reason he must.
“That’s enough! Stop!” She’s back.
His pulse is 170.
“That’s more than enough,” says Maya Pavlovna.
Excellent news: Sergey Petrovich is fine, in perfect health. He can go wash and freshen up. He’s a star: he hung in there for eighteen minutes. Almost an office record.
And Puryzhensky? Not good at all. Better not go there.
She holds out her hand in farewell. He’s always liked it when women hold out their hand in greeting and farewell—it’s uncommon these days.
•
Outside he’s once again left to his own devices.
He should let Marina know he’s all in one piece, but she’s probably still asleep. He wants to move, doesn’t want to stop, so he decides to go home on foot. It’s good when the surface beneath you is stationary and it’s up to you whether to go slow or fast.
He often has to rise early, and he loves the feeling of responsibility for the whole world that comes when you’re walking through a somnolent city. Although right now his thoughts are back there, at the hospital, and he doesn’t even notice how he has ended up at his house. There’s the fence in front of him. It’s old, and beginning to rot here and there, but it doesn’t break up, doesn’t mar the surroundings, and lets you see all around. The gate is fastened with a rope: Marina makes sure it’s closed in some fashion.
Spring has come late this year, and the flowers on the trees, many of which should not have flowered at the same time, have unfurled all at once. The names of most of them he doesn’t know. The one with the little white blooms—what’s that? A tree
or a shrub? This one’s a cherry tree, and that’s an apple tree—it’s grown wild, and every August it bears tiny green apples that are unfit to eat. In front of the porch there’s a lilac—a shame it’s almost finished flowering. And even on the spruce that he buried Mona under yesterday he can detect something flowerlike. Yellow on green, he’s only just noticed. Spruce trees also flower.
He looks around a little bit longer, then opens the door. On the table there’s an open bottle of wine and an ashtray full of cigarette ends—Marina hardly ever smokes now, but yesterday was not an ordinary day.
Quietly, so as not to awaken her, he goes through to Marina’s room, sits on her bed, touches her shoulder with his beard.
“Heavens!” Marina looks at him in astonishment. She seems happy to see him. “Wait a second, I’ll get dressed.”
“No,” he says. “What for?”
•
“Are you all right? Are you sure they haven’t made a mistake?” asks Marina when he makes a sound that could have been a laugh or a moan.
No, no, there’s no mistake, he’s in perfect health.
“Then why are you shaking?”
Now he really is laughing, there’s no mistaking it: “I’m all atremble.”
It’s amazing, says Marina, he doesn’t smell of the hospital at all. Perhaps it’s a good idea for him to get some sleep now?
And so he goes to his room, looks around, and thinks: It would be good if it could always be this way, well into old age. These books on the crowded shelves, this dark orange plaid, in places already threadbare, which he uses as a bedspread. The Greek icon by the headboard, also in shades of red and yellow. To live this way until he gets old. There’s still time left. “God and a broad”—he remembers Father Lev. It’s good to be alive. He closes his eyes, thinks about his neighbor the writer: what isn’t written doesn’t exist.
Where should he begin? The priest had a dog . . .
October 2012
Translated by Anne Marie Jackson
POLISH FRIEND
THE STORY doesn’t start with a joke; the joke butchers it, crushes it. The past, present, and future walk into a bar. It was tense! And that’s all, folks. Laughter. No, a story demands expansion, movement.
Here: a girl has just landed in a major Western European city. She holds a suitcase in one hand, a violin case in the other. The young border guard asks her the purpose of her trip. It’s a long story: she has to play for a few people, test out a new violin . . . Her knowledge of the language is poor, so she keeps her answer short: “My friend, he lives here.”
The border guard looks long and hard at her passport: whoa, they’re almost the same age—he’d taken her for about fifteen. So why is she traveling on a Polish visa? He has to let her through—the EU, Schengen Area and all—but she ought to explain.
Polish visas are the easiest ones to get. After a brief pause, she says: “I have a friend in Poland, too.”
The border guard gives her a sleazy grin. But that’s okay. The main thing is that he lets her through.
And that is where the story starts.
•
Like all of her peers, this girl has studied music since she was about six—late kindergarten. She is now in her fourth and penultimate year at the conservatory. Her professor, well into her ninth decade, has devoted her entire life to ensuring the violin is played clearly and expressively. In the whole world there’s not a pedagogue more renowned.
“Listen to yourself,” the professor says. In essence that’s all she says. “What am I to do with you, eh? You love music? So what—go listen to a CD. Well, what are you just standing there for? Play.”
Not everyone can stick it out, but most of them do. They’ll be made to repeat a particular move, year after year, until suddenly she’ll say, “If only you weren’t so dim . . .” which means they’ve finally got it, and now they’ll never lose it.
The girl and the professor have finished for the day. The girl is packing up her violin.
“Say,” the professor catches her off guard, “what instrument did you want to play as a child?”
What an odd question. The violin, of course.
The professor looks surprised.
“And how did that come about?”
And so the girl explains: in an old apartment she had found a violin, a one-eighth size, without any strings, but she had held it, twirled around with it in front of the mirror, and . . .
The professor mutters pensively: “So your dream’s come true?”
Was that a question or a statement? And in that very moment, who is it that the professor sees—perhaps this student of hers, but sixty years down the line? Or is it just a memory?
•
We examine photographs from 1934, when the professor was ten years old. Those same regular features, that same detachment, that same calm. And here, a short concert program, a children’s concert: Leva, Yasha, her. If the photos were of a higher quality, you’d be able to make out the little mark on the left side of each child’s neck, the mark that gives away a violinist.
There’s more—from the years of evacuation: Leva and Yasha again, by now with grown-up concert programs. And another: Katya and Dodik, or that’s what it says on the back. So your dream’s come true . . . There’s a story there too, of course, but that one can’t be unwrapped without losing something important, something that can’t be put in words.
“To love alone does music yield,” wrote Pushkin. But does it?
Let’s get back to that Polish friend: once again, he’s about to come in handy.
•
The girl returns from Europe with a beaded necklace of singular beauty. When questioned by one of her classmates (yes, a classmate—she has no real friends) she replies, not quite knowing why: “My Polish friend gave it to me.”
This classmate is a violinist too. She’s gabby, impetuous—excessively so—although, it must be said, she does have an occasional flair for striking imagery: “It’s like opening a window, and whoosh—a soldier!” was how she described the feelings evoked by a particularly joyful modulation.
She was already engaged by this point—much to the professor’s dismay: “Married? But she hasn’t even played the Sibelius! There are those who are my students,” she had continued, “and those who are just instructees.”
In the end, the classmate had to study under another professor.
“Oh, friend, I’m so happy for you!” she says of the girl’s necklace. “And there I was, thinking you’d end up like one of those arctic aardvarks.”
And just like that, the Polish friend takes on some sort of existence. But it won’t be long before he comes through for her big time.
•
Finding a violin, one that speaks in your voice, is always an event. And this violin—which, despite its sudden arrival in her life, she already knows will never leave her side—has a rich and noble sound. There isn’t a hint of screechiness, not even on the highest of notes. An Italian model—half-Italian, at least: violins, too, can be crossbreeds; the body of one, the scroll of another. It’s fairly young—a hundred and some years. A good man, himself rather long in the tooth, has given it to her. Certain peculiarities in the circumstances linger in the air, but neither the girl, nor indeed we, will ever learn the details. He is a good man, comfortably off, and troubled by his conscience—yet which good people aren’t troubled by their conscience? He gave her the violin with a single condition: that she wouldn’t tell a soul.
Her classmate also takes a liking to the violin.
“How much did it set you back? Go on, say—just for a laugh.”
The girl shrugs: Why is that something to laugh about?
“That Polish friend of yours again? If you ask me, I’d be terrified carrying a thing like that around.”
“But not your child?” her classmate is already a mother by this point.
“Never much liked Poles, myself . . . But maybe I’m missing something?”
Apparently so.
The girl isn’t about to let her friend be insulted like this: “That’s not arrogance—it’s integrity.”
“Is he even coming to visit?”
“What’s it to you?”
Her classmate shares absolutely everything—whether about her now ex-husband, or the man or men she’s currently seeing. What secrets could they possibly have? Come on, it’s no big deal!
“Can I at least ask what his name is?” her classmate asks. Clearly she’s hurt. “Seriously—not even that? Fine, have it your way.”
Soon enough, everyone at the conservatory knows all about her Polish friend. He’s generous, has good taste—that’s enough to stir up some jealousy. “Still waters run deep,” that’s what the more experienced of her contemporaries say about her. But they’re wrong: her placid surface concealed no roiling depths.
•
Graduating from the conservatory is no piece of cake. For the ensemble exams, the girl wants to take on something more obscure. She listens to music for different ensemble types. A horn trio—maybe that could work? She finds the horn player who’s considered the best in her year: “Do you know the piece?”
“No.”
“Well, would you like to play it?”
The horn player goes with his gut. “No.”
For the state exams she has to do without a horn.
•
Now, with the conservatory behind us, it is time for the girl—and us—to move on into the future. To do more than listen, watch, and take note; to conjecture, imagine. For example, could we have foreseen the futures of the children in that photograph from 1934? Probably, yes. First, there is no such thing as chance, and second, fate is but an aspect of personality—or so it appears to us.
Of course, certain external circumstances are impossible to predict. And, where there is no such thing as chance, there is such a thing as uncertainty, and a rather broad one at that. For instance: Will our country last? Its predecessor, with all its might, was more short-lived than your average violin, for which seventy years is nothing, a piffling age: seventy-year-old violins look virtually brand-new; they have no cracks to speak of; sometimes luthiers have to imitate wear and tear. As it currently stands, it doesn’t appear that this country, successor to the one in which Leva and Yasha and Katya and Dodik grew up, has a long life in store: it’ll fall apart, disintegrate, too many cracks to count. But then again, that may not come to pass. We shouldn’t look to contrive an outcome—let that story run its own course.