in place of rags and penny pieces,
to soar and dance in heaven’s breezes
unrehearsed and faultlessly.”
“It’s such a simple little poem, and you wouldn’t really know from it that I was flying, that I was actually there, where flight is as natural … as everything …”
“You mean, hallucinations?” Alik asked anxiously.
“Oh no. They aren’t hallucinations. It’s like you, like this table, reality. Only slightly different. I can’t explain. I am like Kitty here.” She stroked the cat. “I know everything, I understand everything, but I can’t express it. Only she doesn’t suffer from that and I do.”
“But Masha, I can tell you everything comes through splendidly in your writing. It really works.”
He was speaking gently and calmly, but he was extremely disturbed. “Is it schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis? I’ll phone Volobuev tomorrow and ask him to see what it is.”
Volobuev, a consulting psychiatrist, was a friend of someone who had been in Alik’s class at the university, and in those times the guildlike community of doctors, a legacy from better times and better traditions, had not yet fallen apart.
But Masha was still reciting, unable now to stop:
“And on that day when free as birds,
transformed by my six-winged translator
beyond the wit of their creator,
burst forth in power my random words,
‘Let me depart’ shall be my supplication,
a coat of many colors consummation
of all my sins, ‘at last no more to roam,
Into my Father’s house, my heavenly home.’ ”
Still, Butonov would not leave Masha alone. She went to him in Rastorguevo three times more. It seemed that the note she had struck was so high that there was no going higher—her voice would break, everything would break. Only now, when every meeting felt as if it were the last one, did Butonov admit to himself that Masha had so far eclipsed her prototype, half-forgotten Rosa, that he could no longer even remember the face of his lost horsewoman; and now he no longer saw Masha as being in the likeness of Rosa, but that fleeting love affair seemed to have contained the promise of the present one. The inevitability of parting intensified his passion.
He had dropped the two or three other women who had been a simultaneous but less-than-crucial part of his life. One, whom he actually quite needed to keep sweet for his work, a secretary of the sports organizing committee, had given him to understand that she was offended by his neglect; the second was a client, a young ballerina for whom he had made an exception to his rule that the massage table was a work surface and not a suitable place for dalliance, who had fallen out of contention automatically when she moved to Riga. He really hadn’t seen Nike since December. They had phoned each other a few times, expressed a polite desire to meet, but neither had made the least effort to do so.
Butonov had a major career decision looming. He was fed up with sports medicine, the unvarying impact injuries he was constantly dealing with, and the no-holds-barred politicking associated with trips abroad. A timely offer had materialized: a rehabilitation center was being set up for high-ranking Communist Party and government officials and their families, and Butonov was a likely candidate to manage it. This held out a number of interesting possibilities. At the age of thirty-five his wife Olga had reached her professional ceiling, as happens with mathematicians, and she was egging Valerii on: a new direction; state-of-the-art equipment; you can’t spend your whole life running your fingers over the same old pressure points, etc.
Ivanov, by now wrinkled and yellow and with the passing years looking ever more like a Buddhist monk, warned him, “You don’t have the brain for it, and you don’t have the stomach for it.” His remark contained both respectful appreciation and a subtle put-down.
Butonov rated Nike’s judgment highly, especially since her very successful intervention in his interior decorating, and decided to consult her. He met her by the Maly theater and they went to a ghastly little restaurant on Taganskaya Square which, lying at the intersection of their routes, was at least convenient.
Nike was looking on top of the world, although everything about her was slightly de trop: the long fur coat, the short skirt, the large rings, and her flowing mane of hair. They chatted about this and that in an easy, cheerful way. Butonov explained his problem to her. She became unexpectedly severe, frowned, and told him abruptly: “Valerii, you know, in our family we have a very good tradition, which is to stay as far away from the authorities as possible. I had a close relative, a Jewish dentist, who put it splendidly: ‘In my heart I love Soviet power so much, but my body just won’t react to her.’ If you take this job, you will have to spend all your time cuddling that body.” Nike swore just within the bounds of acceptability, fluently and with great artistry.
Butonov felt a huge sense of relief. Her jocular swearing had answered his question. The Fourth Directorate’s rehabilitation center was off, as he gratefully informed Nike there and then.
Their friendly feelings for each other reached a sufficient temperature for them to finish their shashlyks and get into Butonov’s beige Moskvich and for Butonov, without needing to ask any further questions, to make a U-turn on Taganskaya Square and head for Rastorguevo.
Masha was suffering the most unbearable form of insomnia, when all possible sedatives have been taken and arms, legs, back, everything is asleep except for a small center in the brain which is transmitting the same signal over and over again: “I can’t sleep … I can’t sleep …”
She slipped out of bed, where Big Alik was sleeping with his knees drawn up to his chin, looking very small in this fetal position. She went to the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, put her hands under the cold tap, washed, and lay down to rest on the couch in the kitchen. She closed her eyes and again heard: “I can’t sleep … I can’t sleep …”
He was standing in the doorway, her usual angel, clad in somber dark red raiment. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but his eyes were deep blue, as if he were looking through the slits of a theatrical mask. Masha noticed that the doorway was a false one: the real door was farther to the right. He stretched out his hands to her, placed them over her ears, and even squeezed a little.
“Now he’s going to teach me clairvoyance.” She understood that she had to take off her dressing gown. She stood there now in her long nightgown.
He was behind her and pressing her ears and eyes closed, and with his middle fingers began to massage across her forehead and right down to the bridge of her nose. Delicate waves of color floated toward and away from her, rainbows extending to a great range of hues. He was waiting for her to stop him, and she said, “Enough.”
The fingers stopped immediately. In a beam of pale yellow light with an unpleasant green tinge, she saw two people, a man and a woman. They were very young and slender. They came nearer as if she were watching through binoculars until she could recognize them. They were her parents. They were holding hands and aware only of each other. Her mother was wearing a familiar light blue dress with dark blue stripes, and she was younger than Masha herself. What a pity they could not see her.
“This can’t go on,” Masha understood. He began stroking across her forehead once more and pressing on some particular point.
“Butonov’s art, pressure points,” Masha thought. She stopped the beam of yellow light and saw the house in Rastorguevo, the closed side gate and herself beside it. The car was inside the main gate, and the small light was burning in Grandmother’s half. She passed through the side gate without opening it and approached the lighted window, or rather the window approached her, and rising easily into the air, she flew up and dived smoothly inside.
They did not see her, although she was right beside them. Nike had thrown back her long neck, and she could have touched it. Nike was smiling, even perhaps laughing, but the sound was turned off. Masha ran her finger down Butonov’s gleaming chest, but he did not notice. His
lips trembled and parted, and revealed his front teeth, one of which was set slightly off true.
“Turn around, please, and go back,” Nike said quietly to Butonov, looking out through the window at Ryazan highway.
“Is that what you want?” Butonov asked in some surprise, but did not argue, engaged reverse gear and turned the car.
He stopped in Usachevka. They parted warmly, with a good, live kiss, and Butonov was not in the least put out. He could take no for an answer. In these matters nobody owes anyone anything. It was still early evening, light snow was falling, and Katya and Liza were waiting up for their mother.
“So much for Rastorguevo,” Nike thought, and lightly ran up the stairs to the third floor.
Masha was standing in the corridor between the kitchen and the living room in an icy draught and had a sudden revelation, as if she had been struck by lightning, that she had once before stood in her nightgown in this exact same freezing current of air. The door behind her would open in a minute and something dreadful would be behind it. She ran her fingers across her forehead to the bridge of her nose, rubbed the middle of her forehead: wait, stop …
But the horror behind the door kept growing. She forced herself to look around. The false door moved slightly.
Masha ran into the living room and pushed the door to the balcony. It flew open without creaking. The cold which blew in from outside was fresh and joyful, and the air behind her was icy and stifling.
Masha stepped out onto the balcony. The snow was falling gently and it was a choir with a thousand voices, as if every snowflake carried its own musical note, and this moment too was something she recognized. This had happened before. She turned; something dreadful was standing behind the living-room door and it was coming nearer.
“Oh, I know, I know.” Masha climbed onto the box the television had come in, from there onto the long window box fixed to the side of the balcony, and made the inner movement which raises you into the air.
His legs drawn up to his stomach, her husband Alik slept on; in the next room, in exactly the same position, her son was sleeping. It was the start of the spring equinox, a glorious festival of the heavens.
CHAPTER 16
Medea received the telegram twenty-four hours later. Klava the postmistress delivered it in the morning. Telegrams were sent in three eventualities: Medea’s birthday, the imminent arrival of relatives, and a death.
With the telegram in her hand she went through to her room and sat down in the armchair which now stood where she herself used to stand, facing the icons. She sat there for a considerable time, moving her lips, then got up, washed out her cup, and got ready for the journey. From her illness in the autumn she still had a disagreeable stiffness in her left knee, but she was used to it by now and just moved a little more slowly than usual. Then she locked the house up and took the key to the Kravchuks.
The bus stop was nearby. It was the same route her guests usually took, from the Village to Sudak, from Sudak to the bus station at Simferopol, and from there to the airport.
She was in time for the last flight and late that evening rang the doorbell of Alexandra’s house in Uspensky Lane, which she had never visited before. Her sister opened the door to her. They had not seen each other since 1952, twenty-five years. They embraced and shed floods of tears. Lidia and Vera had just left. Her face swollen with tears, Nike came out into the lobby and clung to Medea.
Ivan Isaevich went to put on the kettle. He guessed this was his wife’s elder sister come from the Crimea. He vaguely recollected some kind of long-standing feud between them. Medea took off the downy head scarf which made her look as if she had just come up from the country. Beneath it the black scarf was wound around her head and Ivan Isaevich was amazed by her iconic face. He saw a great resemblance between the sisters.
Medea sat down at the table, looked around the unfamiliar house, and gave it her approval. This was a good place.
Masha’s death was a great sorrow, but it had also brought Alexandra Georgievna a great joy, and now she was puzzling over how one person could contain such different emotions at the same time.
Medea for her part, sitting to her left, simply couldn’t imagine how it had come about that she had not seen the person dearest to her for a quarter of a century, and was horrified. There really seemed to be no good reason or explanation for it.
“It was an illness, Medea, a serious illness, and nobody understood it at all. Alik’s friend, a psychiatrist, apparently examined her a week ago and said she needed to be taken into the hospital straightaway: she had an acute manic-depressive psychosis. He prescribed some drugs. They were waiting for permission to emigrate any day, you see. That was the problem. But I could see there was something wrong with her. I didn’t hold her hand the way I did before. I’ll never forgive myself,” Alexandra blamed herself.
“Do stop, for God’s sake, Mama! Don’t blame yourself for this at all. It really is my … Medea, Medea, how am I to live with this? I can’t believe it,” Nike sobbed, while her lips, designed by nature herself for laughter, seemed still to be smiling.
The funeral took place not on the third day, as would have been usual, but on the fifth. There was a postmortem. Alik came with two friends and Georgii to the forensic-medicine mortuary somewhere near the Frunze Metro station.
Nike was already there. She had wound a piece of white crepe de Chine around Masha’s shaven head and neck, on which the prosector’s coarse stitches had been visible, and tied it with a firm knot at the temple in the way Medea did. Masha’s face was untouched, pale and waxen, its beauty undefiled.
The priest from the Preobrazhenka church, which Masha had attended occasionally over the last few years, was deeply saddened but refused to conduct a funeral service for a suicide, so Medea asked to be taken to a Greek church. The most Greek of the Moscow churches was one affiliated to the Antioch congregation. There, in the church of Theodore Stratilatos, she asked to see the dean, but the serving woman subjected her to an interrogation. While she was explaining, with her lips pursed and her eyes lowered, that she was a Pontic Greek and had not been in a Greek church for many years, an old hieromonk came up and said in Greek, “I can recognize a Greek woman from a long way off. What is your name?”
“Medea Sinoply.”
“Sinoply … Is your brother a monk?” he asked quickly.
“One of my brothers went to a monastery in the 1920s, in Bulgaria. I have had no news of him since.”
“Agathon?”
“Athanasii.”
“Praise be to the Lord,” the hieromonk exclaimed. “He is a hermit on Mount Athos.”
“Glory be to the Lord.” Medea bowed.
They had some difficulty understanding each other. The old man proved to be not Greek but Syrian. His Greek and Medea’s were very different. They talked for over an hour sitting on a bench beside the candle box. He told her to bring the girl and promised to conduct the service himself.
When the bus with the coffin arrived at the church, a crowd had already assembled. The Sinoply family had representatives of all its branches: Tashkent, Tbilisi, Vilnius, and Siberia. The various golds of the church’s icon frames, candlesticks, and vestments were complemented by the different shades of copper on Sinoply heads.
Ivan Isaevich stood between Medea and Alexandra, a broad man with a floury pink face and an asymmetrical wrinkle running obliquely across his forehead. The elderly sisters standing before the coffin adorned with white and lilac-colored hyacinths both had the same thought: “It would be more fitting for me to be lying there among these flowers which Nike has arranged so beautifully, and not poor Masha.”
In the course of a long life they had learned to live with death, to be at ease with it: they had learned to meet it at home, veiling the mirrors, living two strict, quiet days in the presence of the body to the murmuring of psalms and the flickering of candles. They had known peaceful departings, painless and dignified; they had known of death at the hands of roughnecks, and the lawless in
vasion of death when the young perished in the lifetime of their parents.
But suicide was more than anyone could bear. What reconciliation could there be to that fleeting moment when a young lively girl had leapt of her own volition out into the slow rumbling whirlpool of snowflakes and out of life.
The hieromonk came out to the coffin, and the choir began singing the most expressive words of all those composed in times of earthly leave-taking and separation. The service was in Greek and even Medea understood only certain words, but all those present could clearly feel that in this bitter, inaccessible singing there was more meaning than even the wisest sage can contain within himself.
Those who wept, wept silently. Aldona wiped away her tears with a man’s checkered handkerchief. Gvidas the Hun nervously wiped a leather glove under his eye. Debora Lvovna, Masha’s mother-in-law, was all for wailing in loud lamentation, but Alik gave his doctor friends the nod and they led her from the church.
Masha was buried in the Foreigners’ Cemetery, in the same grave as her parents, and then everyone went back to Uspensky Lane: Alexandra Georgievna had insisted on having the funeral party there. There were a lot of people, and there was space at the table only for the older ones and relatives who had come a long way. The young people were all on their feet, with glasses and bottles.
Little Alik found a moment to ask his father in a whisper, “Daddy, do you think she has died for always?”
“Soon everything will change and then everything will be fine,” his father answered diplomatically.
Little Alik gave him a long, cold look. “Well, I don’t believe in God.”
On the morning of that day, their permission to emigrate had arrived. They were given twenty days to pack their things, which was fairly generous. In the memory of their friends the farewell merged with the funeral party, although Alik arranged it in Cheryomushki.
Debora Lvovna duly stayed with her sister, and Alik left with his son and a checkered medium-sized Bulgarian suitcase. The customs officials took one sheet of paper from him—Masha’s last poem, written shortly before her suicide. Needless to say, he knew it by heart.
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