Calligraphy Lesson

by Mikhail Shishkin

  Papa, are you busy? I wanted to ask you about one thing.

  What, now?

  All right, it doesn’t matter. Later. Someday.

  Naturally, Evgenia Dmitrievna, there are definite drawbacks to any situation. I don’t like street orchestras. Drumming is to me what a thick fog is to you. Or a snowfall, for instance. Then it’s like even the streetcar’s wearing felt boots. Or new shoes—that’s a torture only the blind can understand. In general, as a result of their limited mobility, nonsee-ers’ muscles are flaccid, their bones thinner, and their fingers—here, look—can be bent back without much effort. And I’ll admit, I don’t find the way you slip me thicker, sturdier dishes so I won’t break them very nice, Evgenia Dmitrievna. On the other hand, believe me, the nonsee-er has his advantages. Why else would the philosophers of antiquity have blinded themselves? Evidently, they understood that your visible world, which you treasure so, is no more than tinsel, smoke, zilch. Those colour pictures say nothing about the essence of things; they only corrupt and render you helpless. With your eyes closed, you couldn’t even get your spoon in your mouth. Of course, it’s easy to cheat a blind person, but you can’t fool him. It’s not hard to artificially make the right facial expression in a conversation, but you can’t do that with your voice. Words lie; the voice never. What seems important to you—colour, shapes, so-called beauty—are in fact of no importance whatsoever. Does it matter what colour the sky or wallpaper is? A bust that is usually admired is really nothing special—a head’s a head. What difference does it make how you look, Evgenia Dmitrievna? I can’t see you, but that doesn’t change anything about our relationship. What difference does it make what kind of hair or nose you have? All that’s important is that you hate me.

  The floor polisher came and slid his brush under the couch and out rolled a dried up Christmas mandarin orange, ringing like a nut.

  Zhenya dear, what’s the date?

  The teenth of Martober.

  And they brought a blind man to Him, and they asked Him to touch him. Taking the blind man by the hand, He led him out of the village, spat in his eyes, laid His hands upon him, and asked whether he saw anything. The man looked and said, “I see people passing by like trees.” Then He laid His hands on his eyes again and told him to look again. And the man opened his eyes and saw everything clearly.

  I explained, “Alyosha, my son, don’t act crazy! Why should you marry her?” He said, “How can you not understand? Vera’s having my baby!” I said, “Lord, who cares who’s expecting what from who!” And he said, “Mama, what are you saying! What are you saying!” I always called her Vera dear, darling—but she bore me a grudge and set Alyosha against me. Right before the wedding, a miscarriage. “Alyosha,” I told him, “This is a sign.” My little idiot should have postponed the wedding and let everything run its course—to the end. But no, he married out of principle. “You don’t love her,” I told him. His whole body flinched. “How can you know whether I love her or not? On the other hand, I won’t be a scoundrel.” Then there was another miscarriage. That was right before my eyes. A five-month-old boy. Hands, feet, fingers, ears, wee-wee—just like a live baby. The third time they told her, Choose, it’s either you or a child. What choice was there? For some reason Vera decided it was all my fault. That’s ridiculous, of course, but in her condition she might have thought anything. I feel like a mother to her. I do understand… I sent them a gift at Christmas, a Chinese cup with a lid, the one I had from my grandmother. And what happened? I came home and my box was standing by the door. As if they’d said, Go choke on your gifts. You know, Zhenya dear, at the time, I remember, I went to bed and thought I could never get up. No, that’s not it. I could, but I saw no point, no need. I wasn’t even hungry. I lay like that a whole week. I’d eat a bite, wander around my room, and go back to bed. And then, you know, life won out. It’s all so simple. I laughed at myself, fool that I am. Life’s like that, Zhenya. Afterward you have to laugh. Vera and I made our peace somehow. They would visit me on holidays, and I’d visit them. And here she’s fallen ill, and I wanted to move in to look after. “Don’t,” she said. If she says don’t, I won’t. “Zhenya comes over, she helps,” she said. “What Zhenya?” “Dmitry’s, Alyosha’s friend, his daughter. An odd girl, but good-hearted.” And here you are. What a happy girl you are, Zhenya. The very best is just about to begin for you. I know. I had all that. Imagine, Zhenya, for me, after every time, a while later it would heal. Can you imagine? My doctor, the late Pyotr Ilich, was always amazed. “I can’t tell you how many sugarplums I’ve seen in my day, but never in my life anything like this.” That’s what he called them, sugarplums.

  So, kind Alexei Pavlovich, I hasten to inform you who is breathing seagull-beaten air that I had a fight with my father, that we made each other so mad we stooped to low blows. We shouted, trying to say the most hurtful things we could, and rejoiced in the wounds we inflicted on each other. I ran to my room and wailed for an hour. I assume you’re already experiencing a slight incapacitation, an unpleasant chill: Did my father find out about me and you, about our plot, about the fact that I’m your secret, and therefore true, wife? Calm down. My father is still in the dark. What set us off was completely insignificant, not even worth mentioning. All that’s important is that we are little by little, bit by bit, sucking the life out of each other, and the closer we are, the more lethal it gets. Mika came in with water and valerian drops and begged me to take them, but I waved her off, knocking the tray out of her hands, and the glass spilled on the bed. She said, “Zhenya, the bed has to be changed!” And I shouted at her, “There is no has to! Leave me in peace!” Here I am lying in the wet and writing these lines to you. You, kind Alexei Pavlovich, are afraid of my father. So am I. I keep imagining telling him. What’s scary isn’t his anger, that he’d kill me and you—because he wouldn’t—but something else. My father is irascible, crude, and crazy. But that’s not why you’re afraid of him. You’re afraid because he’s holy, not of this world. He’s amazing, remarkable, a kind that no longer can or does exist. That woman, my mama, hasn’t existed for a long time, she’s absent in nature, and instead of her is a void easily filled by things and people, but my father has latched onto this void and won’t let anyone or anything in. He thinks he’s doing all this for me, out of love for me. He thinks he’s living for his Zhenya’s sake. He’s never denied me a thing, neither money nor time. He could play with me for hours—puppets, theater, post office, all that childish nonsense. When I was just a child, he was already jealous of the whole world, even when I was simply playing with other children. It’s a disease, insanity. He’s not normal. You never know what to expect from him. He does impossible things. In the spring we went to Petersburg, and on the way back the train was held up at a station; some woman had thrown herself under the wheels. Everyone went to look, and I wanted to go, but my father wouldn’t let me. I lay on my berth and read. Two Germans were standing by the open door in the passageway chatting. It was so stuffy, you couldn’t close the compartment door. The train started. We rode and rode, and the Germans kept chatting, or rather, one spoke while the other listened. I already had a headache, and that voice was so grating and effeminate, I couldn’t stand it. My father stuck his head out into the passage and asked them to move away or quiet down. I said, “They didn’t understand you.” And he replied, “The gentlemen are in Russia, so they should be so kind as to understand Russian.” The German did not quiet down and kept chattering. Finally my father couldn’t take it and hollered at him. “Du, Arschloch! Halt’s Maul!”10 The Germans cleared out.

  I laughed half the way home. When Vera Lvovna had just gone to the hospital, my father and I went to see her. After a thaw, there was sun, the way was impassable, and we could barely get through the mud. My father was hot, he was sweating, striding, his coat open. We bought oranges. I couldn’t wait and ate one on the way and afterward my fingers were sticky. It was hot in the hospital, too. The heat was on, all the windows were sealed shut, and no one
was airing the rooms out because they were afraid of drafts. On the ward, there was one withered old lady on one cot, and she was on the other, lying facing the wall. We sat down, my father on a chair, me on the edge of the bed. Without turning around, Vera Lvovna said, “This is it, Mitya,11 this is it, this is it.” My father cut her off. “Stop it! Those know-it-alls say all kinds of things.” She turned around. Her face was tear-stained and swollen. “Vera, let me look at you.” My father turned down the blanket, pulled her shift to her chin, and started palpating her breasts and feeling under her arms. Vera Lvovna lay with her eyes shut. “This doesn’t mean a thing yet,” my father said. “You’ll see, everything will turn out fine.” Then we ate the oranges. My father slit the peel with his Swiss knife and stripped it off, turning his nails yellow. The peel sprayed. I held one section at a time out to Vera Lvovna. When we left, the janitor on the corner was breaking up the melting ice. The splashes flew straight at us. My father shouted, “Have you gone blind or something?” The man waved his hand, as if to say, Get lost, removed his mitten and blew his nose. My father went up and kneed him in the groin. The janitor deflated and crumbled. I shouted and ran to my father, trying to pull him away, but he shook me off and punched at the man’s cap from above so that the lout fell to the pavement. The ice, his face—it was all covered in blood. My father came to his senses and I led him away. His hands were shaking all the way home, and he kept begging my forgiveness. The day they did the operation, I arrived a little earlier, and there you were, waiting in a nook near the ER. We sat on a small wooden bench by a potted palm and watched the nurse move something from one cupboard to another. She must have been new; I recognized all the old ones. Then the nurse went away and the corridor was deserted. I took your hand and we embraced. That’s how we sat, pressed close. Then the door opened and the nurse came in again. We should have moved apart, drawn back, let go, but that was utterly impossible, and we kept sitting with our arms around each other. The nurse said, “Young lady, let’s go, you can help your mama. Don’t worry so much. Everything’s going to be fine.” Then I stood up and went in.

  P.S. In the room where Mika and Roman sleep, the door is opposite the windows. On a sunny day, beams stream through, jostling, and twisting around at the keyhole, and forcing their way into the dark hallway already twisted, draw on the opposite wall a miniature window hung upside down where, if you squat, you can see past the window frame and billowing curtain to the overturned roof of the next building over and the rusty top of a September birch lowered into the blue sky, like the fox tail from the story. Catch it, Zhenya, big and small. Now I was coming back from the bathroom without turning on the light, and I heard movement behind their bedroom door. I squatted and looked into that same keyhole, and Mika was there helping him beat off.

  If you dream of your mother and she’s alive, that means trouble; deceased, a change for the better.

  I knew a woman I wanted to strangle, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I’d only just been taken home from the school for the blind. “Oh, you’re blind! What a disaster! For long? Have you tried treatment? And there’s nothing to be done?” And so on in that vein. “That’s terrible, never to see the light! I’d rather die than be blind!” Or, “It’s a pity you can’t see. If you could, you’d understand.” Her pity for me was quite sincere. I regret not killing her then because I don’t think they put blind people in prison. But you don’t pity me, so it’s relaxing being with you. Evgenia Dmitrievna, you can’t even imagine how grateful I am to you for that. Then, after I got home, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a cripple. You won’t believe it, but among people just like me I was happy. The legless need to live with the legless, the blind with the blind. I had friends there and it was fun. Though you won’t understand me anyway. Let alone our childish games. They tried to keep us as far away from the girls as possible, but you can’t watch everyone. Nature takes its course, so to speak. What plays a bigger role for us than seeing people are smells. Now you smell like apple soap. I won’t hide it. While you were gone I went around your room and sniffed your clothing, your dress, your underwear. So you see, at school I wanted to go home, but when I finally got home, I was suddenly unhappy. Just imagine. One day my mother was out and I ran away and got clear across town to the school myself. I don’t know what I was thinking or hoping. It was an escape plain and simple. I ran away because it was nice there—no light and no dark, no blind and no seeing. Why I’m telling you all this I don’t know. I love you, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Actually, that’s meaningless. Goodnight.

  Papa, tell me something about Mama.

  Zhenya, I’m tired.

  Tell me.

  Tell you what?

  Something.

  What something?

  I don’t care.

  Fine, tomorrow, I’m very tired.

  Now.

  What should I tell you about?

  I don’t know. Tell me about how when you were a student you climbed through the dacha window to see mama and her father clicked his nippers.

  I already did.

  Tell me again.

  Zhenya, let me be.

  No.

  Fine, then. Your mama and her parents were staying at their dacha in Udelnaya. Zhenya, what’s the point of this?

  Keep going.

  Her father had long nails. He called them nippers and was always clicking them. He was convinced, and tried to convince everyone, that the only help for mosquito bites was if you pressed a cross into the bite with your nail. He treated everyone. He was always trying to sink his nippers into my arm, too. After evening tea I said goodbye and headed for the station because the next day I was leaving for three months to do my stint as a medic at army training camp. Of course, I didn’t go to the station, I went for a swim past the dam. The moment it grew dark, unbeknownst to anyone, I returned. The window was open. Her father was already asleep and her mother was spending the night in town. And that was the first time. The funniest thing was we didn’t know what to do with the sheet. There wasn’t much blood, but still. And the mosquitos were relentless. We lay there slapping each other. I said, “You can say you crushed a bloodsucking mosquito.” She laughed. We never did think of anything. The dawn came, I dressed, and I was about to jump from the windowsill. She whispered, “Wait a sec!” And she held out the crumpled sheet. On the windowsill was a glass jar of water with some kind of flowers. As I was jumping, my elbow knocked it over and it exploded like a bomb. At four in the morning. I leapt over the fence and ran for the station. Not ran, flew. And it was windy, too. I unfolded the sheet, held it over my head by the corners, and hollered for the whole neighborhood to hear, like a lunatic. “Hurrah! Follow me on the attack! Hurrah!” And the sheet flew overhead.