‘Yegorovna, but where’s Leeza’?
‘Leeza . . .’ Yegorovna stopped crying, and that was even
more frightening for Solovyov. ‘So, Leeza left. Her mother died and then she left. What, you didn’t know?’
‘Where’d she go?’
‘God only knows, probably went to college, like you. A
year ago. Maybe more than a year.’
Yegorovna took a rag out of her pocket and blew her
nose, ‘Leeza’s mother was very sick so she took care of her.
Then when her mother died, I wanted to bathe the deceased
for her but Leeza did it herself. Bathed her herself. Buried her here with us. And then Leeza packed up and left . . .’
Yegorovna was making her way out. She went down the
front steps, moving her hands along the railings, but her
monotone still sounded. From somewhere far away, tailing
off, Yegorovna continued telling Solovyov about Leeza,
whom he seemed to have lost forever. Solovyov lowered
himself onto his grandmother’s bed and his head sank into
a huge feather pillow. It was too much.
The room went dark abruptly after the sky darkened. A
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vine on the window frame began fluttering and a weightless flower that had been lying by an icon floated down, right
onto Solovyov. A lightning bolt struck somewhere far away, beyond the forest. Thunder merged with the sound of a
passing train. After the train was gone, he could hear heavy raindrops drumming on the canopy over the front steps.
Solovyov no longer understood if he was watching a
thunderstorm as he had done in his childhood or if he was
dreaming a thunderstorm while lying on his grandmother’s
bed. Or if he was actually in his childhood, lying on his
grandmother’s bed and watching a thunderstorm. Bolts of
lightning flashed outside the window, in the gap between
the half-closed drapes. An oil lamp’s jittery flame was
reflected on the ceiling. His grandmother was bowing in
prayer, touching the floor. Leeza was standing in the
doorway and smiling. She placed a finger to her lips. Water streamed down her hair. This was not a dream. Leeza truly
had come. She had drawn closer to Solovyov and was
holding his hand.
Solovyov opened his eyes. Yegorovna was sitting on the
edge of the bed.
‘It’s potatoes and mushrooms. Eat it while it’s hot.’
She held out a tin dish for him.
‘Thank you.’
He sat up on the bed, looking senselessly at Yegorovna’s
back. Leeza was not here. He had woken up with that sense
and now could not get used to it. Leeza was not here.
‘It’ll get cold,’ said Yegorovna. She was already at the
door.
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time so it initially seemed as though the dream was continuing. But the dream had gone.
After his nap, he felt like washing. He went to the well,
lowered a pail on the well sweep, and attempted to collect some water. The bottom fell out of the pail when Solovyov
raised it, disappearing into the depths with a matte gleam.
He found another pail in the shed and fastened it to the
well sweep with wire. He collected some water, washed,
and tasted the water. The water was just as fresh as when
he was a child.
The sun peeked out again and Solovyov was surprised at
the length of this day. Its length and variety. It was a quiet summer evening, the kind when he and Leeza would often
sit on the front steps. Sometimes go for walks. They could walk on the only street, on the platform, in the forest, or in the cemetery. There were no other places for walks at
Kilometer 715. Solovyov put on a fresh T-shirt. He went over to the cabinet with the mirror and combed his hair. He was ready to leave the house.
The street greeted him with absolute quiet. Even these
six houses comprising the street had lived their own lives at one time. Their life had not been turbulent, it had simply been life, with shouting over fences, dogs barking, roosters crowing, and the sounds of transistor radios. Now, though, there was nothing but the sound of leaves. The rustle of
grass. This was life after a nuclear explosion.
Solovyov stopped next to the platform. In the tall grass,
the steps leading to the platform could be divined by their railing. A young rowan tree was growing in the controller’s booth, where his mother had once stood. Groping for the
steps with his foot, Solovyov clambered onto the platform.
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The grass was a little lower there, growing in intricate
patterns that stretched along cracks in the asphalt. Solovyov walked over to a bench. In the strictest sense of the word, this was only a halfbench. One of its three cast-iron sections was lying on its side, covered with broken slats. He sat down cautiously on the part that remained standing. Leaned
against the back. Closed his eyes.
If he imagined it was his mother in the controller’s booth instead of the rowan tree (the rails had quietly begun
humming) and if he imagined the bench was whole and
Leeza was sitting on it (he was still not opening his eyes), then what was happening might be declared a quiet summer
evening from his childhood. The rumbling of the rails was
inaccessible to the untrained ear. This was not yet a
rumbling, it was the soundless tension of metal prepared
to carry a train that was still far away. But Solovyov heard it. He even knew which train it was. The 20:32. Moscow–
Sochi.
Oddly enough, it truly was the Moscow–Sochi train.
Despite all the changes in schedules and in the country in general, it passed through the station at exactly 20:32. In actuality, Solovyov was not surprised. Even if attempts had been made to tinker with the schedule, there would have
been an obvious need to revert to 20:32. There was no better time to transit through the Kilometer 715 station.
Freshness blew from the woods surrounding the station.
Mowed grass on the railroad bed gave off a refined, slightly sharp aroma. That blended with the smell of railroad ties
warmed by the sun. With the whisper of a weeping willow
over the platform. This tree had grown as if out of nowhere; nobody saw where it began. Its roots were lost below, in
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the tall grass. Maybe it had no roots at all. It did not even have a trunk: there was only a crown over the platform.
Leeza announced the trains that passed through. She
announced them by placing her palms together like a little boat and pressing them against the sides of her nose: it
came out like a microphone, only quieter. They had heard
announcements like this in the regional capital; nothing was announced at the Kilometer 715 station. Solovyov gave permission for the trains to proceed through the station.
Copying his mother’s motion, he lifted the baton with his
right hand. He looked through the train just as tiredly. After some time, he achieved the same kind of look from
Leeza.
Everybody passing through should know this work was just
a routine for them.
Solovyov was still sitting with his eyes closed at 20:32. As the train approached, he thought that Leeza had managed
to announce it after all. He was sure she was sitting next to him on the bench at 20:32. That his mother was standing in the controller’s booth. She could not help but be there at that time.
They all needed to pull themselves together. To exhale
and not move. This instant would remain if they did not
frighten it away. Just as there was a moment when it is
important for someone wounded in battle not to die. After
prevailing over those critical seconds, the body accustoms itself to life once again. That was what the person who
turned out to be Leeza’s grandfather had said. If Solovyov behaved himself properly here, on the platform, life would again find its past. Catch hold of it. What had seemed dead would suddenly discover its own pulse and the three of
them would return home together: Solovyov, his mother,
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and Leeza. Everything happening later—the deaths of his
mother and grandmother, his departure, studying at the
university—would turn out to be a misunderstanding, an
impetuous departure from this evening’s coziness.
They would return home. His mother (the clang of the
valve on the gas tank) would put on the teakettle. Pour
water into a basin and make him rinse off his feet. On the bottom there would be a triangular spot where the enamel
was chipped. He would put a cork sailboat in the basin. His grandmother would read aloud from Robinson Crusoe. Leeza would take her cup in both hands. He would slowly move
the water around the basin with his feet. The sailboat would begin rocking on the waves. A diesel locomotive whistle
would sound somewhere in the distance. No, of course they
would not return. Not Leeza. Solovyov raised his eyes
toward the controller’s booth. And especially not his mother.
The wind from a passing locomotive engulfed him. The
21:47, St. Petersburg–Kislovodsk. The train had gone
through unannounced.
Only after turning on the light in the entryway did
Solovyov realize it was already dark. He boiled the vermicelli he had brought with him and opened yet another can of
food. It was goby fish in tomato sauce again. It seemed
almost absurd that they were here. The gobies looked at
Solovyov with sadness, making him feel even more unhappy.
Moths were beating against the kitchen window. Their wings never stopped working as they clutched convulsively at the frame, rose along the glass, and slid down again.
Solovyov went into his own room, the one he had occupied
after his mother’s death. Compared with the overall order in the house, his room constituted an exception. It was not
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exactly untidy, it was closer to ‘untouched’. something that immediately caught the eye. A Russian language textbook lay open by a bed leg. The cover faced upwards, just as he had left it on the morning of his departure. Solovyov crouched and picked up the book. Tried to close it. It would not close; it could only be pressed shut. With difficulty. With the unyieldingness of a stiffened body. He laid the book on the desk and it opened to the previous page again. The use of ‘not’ with verbs was what had interested him that morning. Always
written as two words. What an idiot, thought Solovyov; he
slowly stretched out on the bed. The bed squeaked, as usual.
He pulled off his T-shirt and jeans, and threw them on the floor. He clasped the pillow with both arms and buried his face in it. Ceasing to exist.
Solovyov awoke from the jingling of bed knobs at the
head of the bed. An endless freight train was passing through outside his window. It went slowly, waiting for the far signal to change. Wearily sat for a bit on the railroad tracks.
Solovyov’s whole body sensed its vibration. His arms were
still embracing the pillow. He was curled around a balled-up blanket. One freight train replaced the other, heading in the opposite direction; this one went noticeably faster. It
continued accelerating, drawing the rhythm of its wheels
to the boundaries of the possible. A long time ago, Solovyov and Leeza had listened to that rhythm together. The rumble broke off at its upper limit. The sound of the departing
train seemed like an echo in the sudden quiet. Solovyov
settled in on his back. He felt a sticky dampness when he
pulled the blanket out from under himself.
Solovyov headed for the cemetery early the next morning.
On his shoulder he carried a small hoe that he had found
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in the shed. In his hand was an inexplicably persistent gladiolus that had sprouted in what used to be the flowerbed.
The cemetery was in the forest, about twenty minutes from
home. It was difficult to divine the road that led there.
Solovyov remembered the first funeral he had seen. He
was surprised that people scattered flowers in front of
the coffin the whole way. He had seen the men from the
station who were carrying the coffin step on crimson aster heads; he thought he could hear them crunch. He had
stopped and watched as the procession moved further
away. Leeza stayed and stood alongside him. Once
everyone had disappeared into the forest, he and Leeza
began picking up the flowers. Many of the flowers turned
out to be intact. Some did not even have road dust on
them. Solovyov’s grandmother would not allow them to
keep the flowers in the house; that bouquet upset her
very much then.
Solovyov and Leeza went to the cemetery often, especially
in summer. They would sit on narrow memorial benches
and on stone pedestals warmed by the diffused forest sun.
Sometimes (balancing) on metal fences painted to look like silver. Leeza’s white legs would be crisscrossed with pink streaks after sitting on the metal fences.
Crosses stood on the graves; sometimes there were iron
obelisks with stars. Monuments were a rarity at the ceme-
tery. They were trucked in from other places, carefully
carried around the graves, and set in mortar, with a trowel tapping from all sides. This installation method evoked
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immediately after the funeral but later on, after a year or two, once the ground had settled.
One time a monument with a poetry inscription was
installed at the cemetery. It was on the grave of a station chief who had fallen under the Moscow–Sevastopol express
train. Solovyov liked the text very much:
Don’t tell me he has died, for he still lives!
Although the altar’s smashed, its flame still leaps,
Although the rose is plucked, it’s still in bloom,
Although the harp is cracked, its strings still weep.
We mourn.
The management of the N railroad hub.
Solovyov thought for a long time that the management of
the railroad hub had written the beautiful poetry. As was
clarified later, however, out of everything that was carved into that slab, the only words belonging to the railroad
workers (other than the signature) were ‘We mourn’. While
studying in Petersburg, Solovyov learned that poet Semyon
Nadson (1862–1887) was the author of those lines that had
remained in his memory. Be that as it may, the day the
monument was installed, Solovyov told Leeza that in the
event of death he would want to have the same kind of
monument, with poetry carved into it, installed at his grave.
Solovyov said: in the event of death. In the depths of his childish soul, he did not allow such an event.
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by little, their fastening pins were exposed and the obelisks began listing, expressing their hollow essence. They produced an unattractive tinny sound when touched.
Wooden crosses were another matter. Solovyov regarded
those differently. Crosses were not set in mortar. They were dug into neat round pits and the earth around them was
stamped on for a long time; there was no waiting for it to settle. Little Solovyov saw in that motion—which was
un-cemetery-like and even similar to a dance—a lightness
that partially reconciled him with life beyond the grave.
Finally, he even told Leeza that he would like to lie beneath a cross rather than beneath a heavy monument. Leeza
agreed. She did add, though, that a person feels nothing in the grave. But she agreed.
Solovyov remembered how his mother had been buried.
How she had been lowered into a frozen wintery grave.
How they could not pull out the ropes, which got caught
under the coffin, and how people looked at them, with
regret, from a clay heap. Nobody wanted to crawl into a
grave at Kilometer 715 for the ropes. They simply tossed in the ends, which hit the coffin like sonorous gray icicles.
When they returned from the cemetery, Solovyov told
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