Masha stood around for forty minutes or so and left.
“Nike must be in there,” she concluded.
In the train she was thinking not of Butonov but of Nike. Nike had been part of her life from an early age. They were linked, quite apart from everything else, by a physical liking for each other. Since she was a child Masha had loved Nike’s full, puckered lips, her endless supply of smiles, the creases of hidden laughter at the corners of her mouth, her rustling red hair; and in just the same way Nike had liked Masha’s diminutiveness, her little feet, her gawkiness, the delicacy in every aspect of her being.
Masha for her part would unhesitatingly have preferred to be Nike than herself. Nike, of course, didn’t lose time thinking about things like that. She had all she needed in herself.
And now Butonov had joined them together in some sacramental way, like Jacob marrying two sisters. They could have been called comrades-in-arms. Jacob entered the tents, took the sisters, took their handmaidens, and they were one family. And what after all is jealousy but another form of covetousness? You can’t possess another person. Well then, let it be: everybody would be brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. She smiled to herself, thinking about utopian Chernyshevsky and the grand brothel in one or other of the dreams of his heroine in What Is to Be Done?
Nothing unique, nothing personal. All of it boring and bereft of talent. Are we free or not? Where does our awareness of shame and indecency come from? By the time she got back to Moscow, she had written Nike a poem:
A rift between the tree trunk and its shadow;
a rift between the thirst and taking drink;
across the abyss a poem’s swaying ladder
the only way to help us pass the brink.
The shades of sleep, the corridors all gaping,
my only light a captured German torch;
and from contrition there is no escaping:
we do not kill, no ironing we scorch,
don’t slop through puddles, try to hide our errors,
don’t sing forbidden songs, don’t practice guile,
but know, and live in superstitious terror:
the two of us are doing something vile.
She got home around midnight. Alik was waiting for her in the kitchen with a bottle of good Georgian wine. He had finished his experiments and could file their application to emigrate tomorrow if they liked. Only then did it finally sink in for Masha that she would soon be leaving forever.
“That’s splendid. It will put an end to this whole shameful, grisly affair,” she thought. She spent a long evening with Alik, which continued until four in the morning. They talked, made plans, and then Masha fell into a dreamless sleep holding Alik’s hand.
She woke late. Debora Lvovna had not been home for several days. Recently she had often been away on lengthy visits to her ailing sister. The Aliks had already had breakfast and were playing chess. It was a picture of domestic tranquility and even included a cat lying on a cushion on the sofa.
“That’s good! I seem to be recovering,” Masha thought, turning the stiff handle of the coffee mill.
Later they took the sled, and the three of them went to the ice hill. They fell off into the snow, got wet, and were happy.
“Do they have snow in Boston?” Masha asked.
“No, they don’t. But we will go to Utah and ski there, and that will be just as good,” Alik promised.
He always delivered on his promises.
Butonov rang that same evening.
“Not missing me, by any chance?”
The day before, he had seen Masha stamping her feet by his gate but had not opened the door to her because he had a lady visitor, the nice, if fat, translator who had been on his trip with him. They had exchanged glances for the two weeks but no opportunity had presented itself. A soft, lazy woman, very similar as he subsequently realized to his wife Olga, she had writhed like a sleepy cat in Butonov’s arms to the trilling of Masha on the doorbell. Butonov had felt acutely irritated by the translator, Masha, and himself. He needed angular, sharp Masha with her tears and her sighs, not this fatso.
He had been ringing Masha since morning, but first there was no reply because the telephone was unplugged, then Alik picked it up twice and Butonov hung up, and only toward evening did he get through to her. “Please don’t ring anymore,” Masha said.
“When? When can you come? Quickly now,” Butonov said, not hearing what she had said.
“No, I’m not coming. Don’t ring me anymore, Valerii.” Then with a strained, tearful voice she added, “I can’t take any more.”
“Masha, I’m missing you terribly. Have you gone crazy? Are you hurt? It’s a misunderstanding, Masha. I’ll be at your house in twenty-five minutes. Come out then.” He hung up.
Masha was in total confusion. She had decided so splendidly, so firmly, not to see him anymore and had felt a sense of, if not liberation then at least relief, and today had been such fun, with the ice hill and the sunshine. “I won’t go,” Masha decided.
But thirty-five minutes later she threw on a jacket, called to Alik, “I’ll be back in ten minutes!” and rushed down the stairs without stopping to call the lift.
Butonov’s car was waiting by the door. She wrenched the door open and sat down beside him.
“I have to tell you—”
He scooped her into his arms and shoved his hands under her jacket.
“We’ll talk all about it, of course we will, little one.”
The car moved off.
“No, no. I’m not going anywhere. I came out to say I wouldn’t go with you.”
“But we’ve already gone,” Butonov laughed.
This time Alik was offended. “What an appalling way to behave! Can’t you see that?” he berated her late that night when she returned. “Someone goes out for ten minutes and comes back five hours later! What am I supposed to think? That you’ve been run over? Been killed?”
“Please forgive me, for God’s sake. You’re absolutely right, it’s a terrible way to behave.” Masha felt profoundly guilty. And profoundly happy.
Next, Butonov disappeared for a month, and Masha tried with all her might just to accept his disappearance “as fact,” but it was a fact that burned right through her. She ate almost nothing, drank sweet tea, and conducted an interminable inner monologue with her absent lover. Her insomnia was becoming ever more acute.
Alik was alarmed: it was obvious she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He started giving Masha tranquilizers and increased the dose of sedatives. Masha refused to take psychotropic drugs.
“I’m not a lunatic, Alik, I’m an idiot, and you can’t treat that.”
Alik didn’t insist. He saw this as just one more reason why they needed to emigrate as soon as possible.
Nike came to see her twice. Masha talked only about Butonov. Nike cursed him, felt very penitent, and swore the last time she had seen him was in December before he went to Sweden. She also said that he was empty-headed and that the only good thing to come out of the whole saga was that Masha had written so much splendid poetry. Masha obediently read her poems and wondered whether Nike could be trying to deceive her now and whether it was Nike who had been with Butonov when she was ringing at the door.
Alik was doing the rounds of all manner of bureaucratic institutions, assembling a whole mountain of documents. He was in a hurry not only for Masha’s sake: he wanted to get to Boston to carry on with his work, the lack of which was making him feel ill too. They were not emigrating in a straightforward manner: first they would travel to Vienna under the provision for Jews, and then go on to America. It was possible that between Vienna and America they would have a spell in Rome. That depended on the speed with which documents were dealt with by, at that stage, foreign bureaucrats.
To all these complexities there was suddenly added a rebellion by Debora Lvovna. “I’m not emigrating anywhere. I have a sick sister, the only person close to me in the world, and I’ll never leave her.” There the
n followed the canonical text of a Yiddish mama: “I’ve devoted my whole life to you, you thankless boy, and now … that damned Israel: it’s because of them we’ve had troubles all our lives. That damned America, may it come to a bad end.”
In the face of such arguments Alik held his peace and took his mother by the shoulders: “Mother of mine! Can you play tennis? Can you ice-skate? Is there anything in the world you can’t do? Could there maybe be something you don’t know? Some little detail? Be quiet, I beg you. Nobody is going to abandon you. We are going together, and we will support your Fira from America. I will earn a lot of money there.”
Debora Lvovna was quiet for a moment, but then worked herself up into even more of a lather: “What do I need your money for! To hell with your money! Your father and I always despised money. You will ruin the child with your money!”
Alik clutched his head and went out of the room.
When all the documents had been collected, Debora Lvovna categorically refused to go but did give permission for them to emigrate. The exit permits were finally issued, only for Butonov to announce himself again. It happened one morning. Masha got Little Alik ready, took him over to Alexandra, and went to Rastorguevo to say goodbye.
It was a good leave-taking. Masha told Butonov this was the last time he would see her, that she would soon be leaving forever, and she wanted to take every last detail with her in memory. Butonov was agitated: “Forever? Well, of course, you’re right, Masha, quite right. Life here is crap compared to the West, I’ve seen that. But forever …”
Masha walked through the house memorizing it all, because she wanted to retain the house in her memory too. Then the two of them went up to the attic. It was as dusty and cluttered as ever. Butonov tripped over the knocked-out seat of a bentwood chair, and picked it up: “Look.”
The center of the seat was pierced through with knife throws, and marks from near misses were all around it. He hung the seat up on a nail.
“This was the main thing I did as a boy.”
He took out a knife, went off to the far end of the attic, and threw it. The blade stuck in the wall right through the middle of the punched-out circle.
Masha pulled the knife out of the wall and went over to Butonov. He thought she wanted to throw it at the target too, but she only weighed it in her hand and gave it back to him.
“Now I know everything about you.”
After that trip Masha began quietly preparing to emigrate. She took all her papers out of the writing-desk drawers and decided what to keep and what to throw away.
The customs officials did not allow manuscripts to be taken out of the country, but Alik knew someone in the embassy, and he promised to send Masha’s papers out through the diplomatic bag. She sat on the floor surrounded by them, rereading every page, pondering each one, and feeling sad. She could suddenly see that everything she had written was only a draft for what she wanted to write, now or some time in the future.
“I’ll compile a collection and call it Insomnia.”
The poems came out to her like wild animals coming out of the forest, complete but invariably with a defect of some kind, a limp in the foreleg, a limp in the first verse.
There is clairvoyance in the nighttime,
all detail hidden by the dark;
of stripes on walls it’s only white ones
that on the paper show their mark.
The baggage that I bear at nighttime,
the cares and trivia fall away:
the brilliant genius of nighttime
by far outshines the light of day.
I have come to love insomnia,
the crystal vistas of the deep:
their gift, a delicate deposit,
dispels all likelihood of sleep.
Masha grew very thin, becoming even more fragile, and the daytime world, which seemed to her so dull in comparison with the world of night, became more fragile too. An angel appeared. At first she could not actually see him but sensed his presence, and sometimes turned around quickly because she thought she might glimpse him that way. When he came to her in a dream, his features were clearer, and the part of the dream in which he appeared was like a color sequence inserted in a black and white film.
He looked slightly different each time and could assume human form: one time he appeared to her in the form of a teacher dressed in white like a fencing instructor, and started teaching her to fly. They were standing on the slope of a living, softly breathing hill, which was also taking an ill-defined part in the lesson.
The teacher indicated a region of the spine to her, below the level of the shoulders and deeper, where a small organ or muscle was located, and Masha knew that she would fly just as soon as she learned the gentle, precise movement which controlled this organ. She concentrated, and it was as if she had pressed a button: her body began very slowly to break free from the mountain, and the mountain gently helped her with the movement. Masha flew clumsily and slowly, but it was already entirely clear to her what she had to do to control the speed and direction of her flight—to wherever she wanted to go and for as long as she wanted to fly.
She raised her head and saw that the translucent people flying above her were strong and free, and she understood that she too could fly in just the same way. Then she slowly came back down, without having tried out all the possible delights.
This flying was not at all like the flight of birds: there was no flapping of wings, no fluttering, no aerodynamics, just an effort of the spirit.
Another time the angel taught her the techniques of a special verbal intellectual wrestling which does not exist in our world. It was as if you had a word in your hand which was a weapon. He put it in her hand, smooth and comfortable in her palm. He turned her hand, and a sharp ray of meaning glinted out of it. Immediately two opponents appeared, one to the right and above her and the second to the left and slightly below her. Both of them were practiced and dangerous enemies, skilled in this martial art. One glinted at her, and she gave a riposte. The second came in close and directed a quick blow at her, but in some miraculous way she managed to deflect it.
There was a razor-sharp dialogue in these attacks, untranslatable but completely clear in its meaning. Both combatants were ridiculing her, pointing out to her how inferior she was and how hopeless her attempts were to compete with their mastery.
To her growing amazement, however, she deflected every blow and with each new movement discovered that the weapon she held was becoming more intelligent and accurate, and that this combat really did seem closest to the art of fencing. The opponent to the right was more vicious and sarcastic, but retreated. Then the second one backed off too. They were gone, and that meant she had won.
Sobbing openly, she threw herself on her teacher’s breast. He said, “Don’t be afraid. You have seen, nobody can harm us.”
Masha cried even more bitterly because of the terrible weakness which was truly her own, because all the intellectual power with which she had prevailed had not been her own but lent to her by her teacher.
Masha experienced a superhuman freedom and an unearthly joy from this new experience, which came from regions and spaces the angel had revealed to her; but for all the novelty and unimaginableness of what was happening, she intuited that the extremes of pleasure she experienced when she was closest to Butonov derived from the same root and were of the same nature. She wanted to ask the angel about this but he did not let her: when he appeared, she subjected herself to his will eagerly and diligently.
When he disappeared, however, sometimes for several days, she felt very low, as if the joy of his presence had inescapably to be paid for by depression, gloom, emptiness, and miserable monologues addressed to the almost nonexistent Butonov: “So dazzling, the light of Tabor daunts us, but far harder to gaze upon the disk whose empty blackness taunts us through all the following days.”
Masha hesitated over whether to tell Alik about this. She was afraid that, ever the rationalist, he would view the matter in a
medical rather than a mystical light. In her case, however, the realm of poetry lay between medicine and mysticism, and there she was the ruler.
She decided to approach him from that direction. Late one evening when the whole house was asleep, she began reading him her latest poems:
“I noticed how, angelic guardian,
your powers were looking after me,
as to the rock of sun-warmed granite
I pressed my head, still all at sea;
When from the depths of Freud’s dominions,
from darkling realms where sleep is host,
a wave propelled me to my kingdom,
like flotsam cast up on a coast.
And, as in concrete and in metal
there nestle empty voids, a thing
both void and strong had come to settle
in my room, an angel’s wing.
I thought I saw my angel weeping:
his heavenly eyes discerned with rue
the gruesomeness of lovers’ sleeping,
and wept for me and wept for you.”
“I think, Masha, that is a very good poem.” Alik was genuinely delighted. This was not one of those occasions when he felt obliged to express approval out of family solidarity.
“It’s the truth, Alik. I mean the poem. It’s not metaphor or imagination. His presence is real.”
“Well, of course, Masha, otherwise creativity of any kind would be impossible. It’s a metaphysical realm—” he began, but she interrupted him: “Oh, no! He comes to me, just like you. He’s taught me to fly and much more that I can’t tell you because it can’t be put into words. But here, listen:
“Behold how strained the seagull’s flight,
ungainly wings’ uncertain beating,
the tensing of her neck a fight
with wind and gravity, a cheating,
not to founder in the waves
while finding food beneath the surface.
Yet, Lord, you promise all the homeless
feathered wings and eyes that see,
Medea and Her Children Page 28