“So is this the dream?” said Yoni. “Is it?”
“Who the hell knows,” said one of the boys. “They could send us back tomorrow.”
“I’m talking about the roosters, retard,” said Yoni.
“Oh,” drawled the same boy sluggishly. “Well, sure.”
“What the fuck,” said Yoni. “You were the first to yell after every explosion, louder than the roosters even: Those rooster bastards again! Those rooster bastards again! When we cross the border again, I’ll shoot them all! And now look at you lying around.”
“It’s strange that they aren’t crowing,” said Gai.
“You can make soup out of them,” said Yoni, but of course no one got up.
I REPEAT
For Hayut
Once again they went over finding contacts in the address book, answering calls, and entering new contacts into the address book—she demanded it, even though he had promised in advance to put all the numbers in himself. In general now, he tried to do everything in advance. It took almost another forty minutes. During that time he went to the bathroom twice. He spent one of those two trips doubled over in front of the toilet, choking spasmodically on sour saliva. The second time he didn’t even go into the stall, but just rested his burning forehead on the cold windowpane and felt better for a second. He went back to his grandma—she was already watching TV and, accompanied by the unnatural voices of the ostentatiously decked-out men and women, he once again surveyed the clean little room with its curtains. Displayed on her vanity were all her favorite perfume bottles and vials—as a child, he had been allowed to play with some of them and not with others. There was a nice TV here, air conditioning, a clothes closet, he had picked a good home for her, he sorely wished he could live here himself. “Envy,” he thought, ashamed, “is a bad and unproductive feeling.” Here pain assailed him again, he bent in half and waved his arm at his bewildered grandmother—oh, I just dropped something. When he managed to stand straight again, he walked up to his grandma, kissed her firmly on her dry, smooth forehead, then twice more, and made for the door, but then his grandma suddenly said, “One second!” He suppressed a sigh with difficulty while she scurried off somewhere. He no longer had the strength to turn around, he just stood and waited. She returned, stuck something in his hand and said, “Pashenka, explain to me one more time how I can get to the address book,” and he saw that he was holding the TV remote.
At that point he sat on the rug right next to the door, and then lay down, hugging his knees to his chest, closed his eyes, and lay there for a spell.
THE RIGHT ONE
Looking at her back, he said that he had caught a leprechaun and tied him up in the yard. She turned around so abruptly that she almost fell: she had been squatting, fumbling around under the shoe rack. She said that she couldn’t find her lavender shoe, and he asked, “The right or the left one?” In answer to her irritated look he explained that they usually carry the left one around.
“Who?” she asked, and he answered:
“Leprechauns. They’re shoemakers, right, so they carry the left shoe around and cobble it.”
She started to walk quickly around the room, looking under the furniture, he followed her and watched how, each time she bent down, the protruding vertebrae in her neck disappeared behind the collar of her t-shirt and then peeped out again.
“I’m afraid that he’ll get loose and escape,” he said, and here she turned and started to advance on him, forcing him to retreat a little. Trying not to shout, she enunciated:
“If. This is. Another one of your. Stupid. Jokes. Please. Give. Me back. My shoe. Right now!” At that moment her cell rang.
She explained what exit to take off the highway and how best to get there, then stuck her phone into her pocket and said that Pavel would be here any minute and couldn’t he just act like a human being, just one last time. He answered that he was trying and that two minutes would be quite enough to step out back.
“What for?” she asked, despairingly, and he patiently repeated:
“I caught a leprechaun. If you catch a leprechaun, you can ask for a pot of gold or for three wishes. I said no to the gold. He’s tied up in the yard. Come on, please, I don’t think we have a lot of time. I think he’s screaming there, probably at the top of his lungs, and someone is going to run over and take our wishes for himself.”
She snarled that right now she didn’t have three wishes, but only one—to find that f-ing shoe. He said that he had actually already used one wish, so there were only two left and that—nope, it hadn’t come true yet.
“But,” he said, “we could go and try to take the shoe from him, if …” and here she screamed:
“Quiet! Quiet! Just be quiet!”
She jerked the suitcase zipper, took from its maw, which had spat out some white rags, a pair of sandals, pulled them on, tripped on their slender heels, swore and ran out onto the porch. He followed her and she, waving to the arriving car, poked him in the chest with a chewed-up fingernail:
“Take his damn gold and take a trip somewhere. Do you good.”
And he said,
“It’s literally two minutes, it’s just here in the yard, the leprechaun is all …” and she raced away with a wail, leaving the suitcase to Pavel’s care, and he thought: “As soon as they drive off, I’m going to the bathroom to sit on the toilet and read and smoke. Solitude in the bathroom is totally natural, much more natural than in any other space.”
The car door slammed and he quickly went to the bathroom. Here something was amiss. He forced himself to concentrate and realized that a shoe was sitting on top of the toilet tank, a bright lavender one with a slightly scuffed toe. He looked at it for a minute or two, then opened the window, aimed as best he could, and awkwardly threw the shoe out into the yard.
THANK YOU, REALLY
June asked:
“Then why did you agree for me to come live with you?” and Masha said:
“Because we made that deal a year ago already.”
“But a year ago,” said June, “you know … Your daughter was still … uh …”
“Yes,” said Masha. “Of course. But we had already made a deal. That summer she was with you guys, and this summer you’re here with us. I thought I’d be able to handle it.”
A taxi honked below. June dragged her bag out onto the porch, Masha followed and, once there, said:
“When you get to Alex, call me right away. And tell him that I’ll be calling sometime in the evening.”
June waved her fingers joyfully and blew a weightless strand of hair off her forehead; the driver started dragging her suitcase to the trunk. Masha closed the door—and the whole time the tub was filling up, she thought about how she would have to thank Alex again for taking June in, and how over the last twenty-four hours, while everything was getting sorted out and organized, she had already thanked him three times, and that each time she had had to vomit afterward.
HERE’S WHAT IT’S CALLED
“This is what ‘easement’ means?” he asked, looking at the smooth gravestone.
The realtor tried again to extract her heels from the slick, soft, dizzyingly fragrant summer dacha soil.
“Well, you know, they did say that the plot’s got an easement,” she said quickly. “But you know, on the other hand, they’re ready to cut the price a little. If you want, I can talk to them again about the discount, maybe six percent instead of five. They understand, of course, but on the other hand, he says to me, ‘It’s not like it’s a person there, with a person, sure, there’d probably be an issue, of course, but it’s a dog, maybe people will understand, and on our end we’re ready to offer a discount.’ ”
He turned and looked at the house again, then at the road leading down to the main part of the village, then back to the house, then sighed deeply and was immediately intoxicated by the air, by the fine sweet dust suspended in it, by his own sudden lightness, by the fact that everything had finally worked out and he’d be able to mo
ve here, live here year-round, especially in winter, when instead of inane vacationers there’d be snow everywhere and nobody around. The realtor tried to get on her tiptoes, but slid and sighed as her sharp heels sank into the soil again.
“So,” she said dolefully, “should I talk to them again about the discount?”
“No,” he said. “It’s fine, this discount is fine. It’s just how it sounds … ‘easement.’ Amazing.”
NO SUCH THING
“Or maaaaaaybe,” she said in a mysterious voice, “she’s hiiiiiding … under the bed?!”
Here she abruptly yanked the bedspread and looked down, but Nastya wasn’t under the bed, either.
“Or maaaaaaybe,” she said (the Bugs Bunny clock said five till six, in five minutes she should go to the kitchen to check the oven), “she’s hiiiiiding … behind the curtain?”
Nastya wasn’t behind the curtain, either: if there’s one thing her Little Bitty was great at, it was hide-and-go-seek. She closed the window—in general, Bitty wasn’t allowed to open it without permission; someone’s going to get it today.
“Or maaaaaaybe,” she said in the voice of a person visited by an ingenious thought, “maaaaaaybe she’s sitting behind the toybox??”
Behind the toybox was the stuffed hippo that had disappeared three days before, and no one else, but a very faint giggling came from somewhere close by. Here she remembered that, oven aside, she still had to call Alyona to tell her to bring along the big salad dish. It was time to finish the game. She sat down on the edge of the bed.
“OK,” she said sadly, “I give up. Where’s my Little Bitty?”
And we should really give this room a good once-over before they arrive, she thought, surveying the trampled drawing pad spread out on the floor.
“Maybe my Little Bitty ran away to Africa?”
The room was very quiet, not a rustle, not a single sound.
“Maybe,” she said, “my Little Bitty has gone on a trip around the world?”
Silence.
“Maybe,” she said, gradually losing her patience, “fairies have taken my Little Bitty away?”
And then she saw on the floor, right under the windowsill, a tiny, pinkie-sized, pointy leather shoe, and screamed so loud that Nastya tumbled out of the closet with a crash and also began to stare in deep bafflement at that little doll shoe, and then looked at her mom, and then at the fat doll Cecilia, hastily undressed the night before, and then back at her mom.
ON THE FIRST TRY
It was the very beginning of June, and the whole world was redolent of something wet and green.
“Come on,” said the second one pleadingly, hastily getting off the swings and rubbing her injured elbow. “Let’s pretend that that was the Initial Test Attempt, and now we’re doing everything for real.”
“No,” said the first one, getting up from the wet black ground and trying to clean the slick mud off her palms. “No. Let’s pretend this was the Loyalty Testing Program, and you failed.”
BAD GIRL
Children were prancing around, some girl in a wheelchair kept rolling up to each one in turn and saying, “I have new shoes!” She’d rolled up to her, too, probably two or three times already, but she hadn’t heard. It seemed to her that the stuffed dolphin was shrinking—she was squeezing it so hard that it was scrunching up more and more. The playroom, as always, smelled like carpet cleaner—some convalescent child was always throwing up on it. One of the doctors had already come by, tried to take her by the hand, but she pulled her hand away and burst out crying, huddled in a corner, and everyone left her alone. Her butt hurt from sitting on the floor, but she couldn’t move or open her eyes, she just clutched at the dolphin and rocked back and forth. A nurse tried to convince her to leave the playroom (which didn’t work), then left herself, then returned and tried to make her swallow a pill (which didn’t work), then left again, and then the head nurse came instead. “Margarita Lvovna,” she said sternly, squatting down, “they’ve called the chief of medicine, he’s on his way, he’ll appoint the committee, you have to be there. You have to be present for the committee appointment, this isn’t OK. Come on, get up.” Then she allowed herself to be helped up, and to be changed out of the blood-spattered green surgical gown into a clean white coat.
UNAWARES
Then he remembered that he had forgotten to wipe the sink dry after washing the dishes, went and wiped it. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and thought hard: no, everything was clean, everything gleamed, there was even a new deodorizer in the fridge, even the living room rug was free of cat hair. Then he showered, brushed his teeth in there, and mentally went through the contents of the bag: he wouldn’t need his laptop, his passport was already packed, plus a couple of close-up photos, they might come in handy. Spare glasses—he’s always forgetting his glasses everywhere—and a chocolate bar. His phone is in his jeans pocket, he had washed his jeans that morning, they’re clean, so is his t-shirt, another clean t-shirt is in his bag. Seems like everything. All clean, dressed, shoes on, at seven-thirty-two exactly he sat down on the couch and turned on the radio. At that moment their plane was supposed to take off from Rome toward home in New York. He imagined Martha smiling at the patient flight attendant, to her right Henry Jr., mouth agape, enthralled, looking at the landing strip sliding by outside the plane window, Ginny squirming in her buckled seatbelt, working to get her feet onto the seat. He closed his eyes. If anything happens, he’s ready. Clean house. Clean clothes. Their photos in close-up. Spare glasses. Chocolate bar. If anything happens, the radio will report it. The gathering place for relatives will be, most likely, two miles from here, like in eighty-six, and he’d already memorized the map. Chocolate bar, glasses, clean t-shirt. When Martha and the kids flew from Paris, from her mom’s house, he had also gotten ready, but had fallen asleep for some reason. This time, he’ll sit there till the end, promise.
BIT BY BIT
Everything enraged him: the bloated, change-filled pocket slapping his thigh, something hard and sharp in there—he couldn’t put his finger on what that “something” was as he ran; his ribcage cracking open from pain—it was like back in school when they would run a mile and a half in cold May around the October movie theater, along the square, and past the factory canteen with its eternal smell of kasha; finally, he was enraged at how wound up he was, at the feverish counting of minutes—six minutes till the hour, he’s practically at the square already (car, heart in his throat, come-on-come-on-come-on again)—he could cover the square in two minutes (or three? It had always seemed like something you’d never forget)—OK, let’s say it’ll be four till six, then he’ll cross the street—it’ll be one minute till the hour, so he’s how late? Fourteen, no, twelve minutes, but if he can pass the square in two …
Here he made himself stop. “Calm down,” he told himself, doubling over and trying to get air into his burning, hollow chest. “Calm down. You’re already late—that’s number one. It won’t be the end of the world—that’s two. This is no state to show up in—that’s three. Listen carefully. You will now: unbutton your coat; wipe your forehead with your sleeve; figure out what’s in that damn pocket; slow down to a walk. That’s it.”
He did just that and walked on, slowly to spite himself, and what was inside his coat pocket turned out to be not “something,” but his keys—he was lucky they hadn’t fallen out. The square was empty, foliage hid the street, he suddenly felt calm. It was nice here. His chest stopped hurting, twice he thought he saw a squirrel. He even stopped walking, but couldn’t make anything out among the fluttering leaves. Then he looked at his watch—it was twenty-one minutes past six.
He turned around—behind him, still not so far off, he could see the entrance to the square. Then he looked ahead—foliage hid the other end of the narrow paved path, maybe the movie theater was peeping out somewhere over there, or maybe not. He walked for forty more minutes, but nothing changed, only a couple of times a squirrel actually did dive from one nearby branch onto ano
ther, and suddenly froze, its ears trembling. This was so funny that he snorted.
In another hour and a half he took a break. He had about eight hundred rubles with him—not a lot, but not too little, either, he thought with pleasure; if he didn’t live high on the hog, he’d have enough for a week at least. Of course, the nights were still cold, but as any young adventurer will tell you, if you take off your coat and use it as a blanket, everything will be fine.
TYLENOL
Then he went to the bedroom and kissed every one of her dresses, one after the other, but that didn’t help either.
FOR TWO VOICES
“Who were you thinking about just now?” she inquired, but he pretended to be looking to the side, into a dark fold in the window drapes. Then she raised herself up, turned his face toward her with both palms and asked again:
“Who were you thinking about just now?”
“Nobody,” he said and kissed her on the shoulder, but the shoulder slipped away, his lips swabbed the air. “Nobody specific,” he said. “Just, well, about a certain voice. An abstract voice.”
Found Life Page 14