Behind him came the rattle of a dolly and stifled moans, and two elderly women in white coats drove a writhing, nameless body, wrapped in dried-up bloody bandages—face and chest—only the mouth was a black hole. Could it be the blond? . . . Impossible . . . After them came a nurse with an IV, frowning, who stopped when she noticed Ignatiev’s desperate signals. Ignatiev made an effort and remembered the language of humans:
“The blond?”
“What did you say? I didn’t understand.”
“The blond, Ivanov? . . . He had it, too? . . . Extracted it, right?”
The nurse laughed grimly.
“No, they transplanted it into him. They’ll take yours out and put it in someone else. Don’t worry. He’s an inpatient.”
“You mean they do the reverse, too? Why such . . .”
“He’s doomed. They don’t survive it. We make them sign a disclaimer before the surgery. It’s useless. They don’t live.”
“Rejection? Immune system?”
“Heart attack.”
“Why?”
“They can’t take it. They were born that way, lived their whole lives that way, never knowing what it is. And then they go and have a transplant. It must be a fad or something. There’s a waiting list, we do one a month. Not enough donors.”
“So, I’m a donor?”
The nurse laughed, picked up the IV, and left. Ignatiev thought. So that’s how they do it here. An experimental institute, that’s for sure. . . . Ivanov’s office door opened, and a golden-haired someone strode out, haughty, pushy; Ignatiev jumped out of the way, then watched him go . . . the blond . . . A superman, dream, ideal, athlete, victor! The sign over the door was blinking impatiently, and Ignatiev crossed the threshold and Life rang like a bell in his trembling chest.
“Please sit for a minute.”
The doctor, Professor Ivanov, was writing something on a card. They were always like that: call you in, but they’re not ready. Ignatiev sat down and licked his lips. He looked around the office. A chair like a dentist’s, anesthesia equipment with two silvery tanks, and manometer. Over there, a polished cupboard with small gifts from patients, harmless, innocent trifles: plastic model cars, porcelain birds. It was funny to have porcelain birds in an office where such things were done. The doctor wrote and wrote, and the uncomfortable silence thickened, the only sounds the squeal of the pen, the jangle of the lone black camel’s bridle, and the stiffened rider, and the frozen plain. . . . Ignatiev squeezed his hands to control the trembling and looked around: everything was ordinary; the shutters of the old window were open and beyond the white window frame was summer.
The warm, already dusty leaves of the luxurious linden splashed, whispered, conspired about something, huddling in a tangled green mass, giggling, prompting one another, plotting: let’s do it this way; or how about like this? Good idea: well, then, we’re agreed, but it’s our secret, right? Don’t give it away! And suddenly, quivering as one heady, scented crowd, excited by the secret that united them—a wonderful, happy, warm summer secret—with a rustle, they lunged toward their neighboring, murmuring poplar: Guess, just guess. It’s your turn to guess. And the poplar swayed in embarrassment, caught unawares; and muttered, recoiling: easy, easy, not all at once; calm down, I’m old, you’re all so naughty. They laughed and exchanged glances, the linden’s green inhabitants: we knew it! And some fell down to the ground, laughing, into the warm dust, and others clapped their hands, and still others didn’t even notice, and once more they whispered, inventing a new game. Play, boys; play, girls! Laugh, kiss, live, you short-lived little green town. The summer is still dancing, its colorful flower skirts still fresh, it’s only noon by the clock: the hands triumphantly pointing up. But the sentence has been read, the permission granted, the papers signed. The indifferent executioner—the north wind—has put on his white mask, packed his cold poleaxe, is ready to start. Old age, bankruptcy, destruction are inexorable. And the hour is nigh when here and there on the bare branches there will be only a handful of frozen, contorted, uncomprehending old husks, thousand-year-old furrows on their earthy, suffering faces. . . . A gust of wind, a wave of the poleaxe, and they too will fall . . . I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, thought Ignatiev. I can’t hold on to summer with my weak hands, I can’t stop the decay, the pyramids are collapsing, the crack has sundered my trembling heart and the horror of the witnesses’ useless suffering . . . No. I’m dropping out of the game. With magic scissors I will cut the enchanted ring and go outside. The shackles will fall, the dry paper cocoon will burst, and astonished by the newness of the blue and gold purity of the world, the lightest, most fragile butterfly will fly out and grow more beautiful. . . .
Get out your scalpel, your knife, your sickle, whatever you usually use, doctor; be so kind as to sever the branch that is still blooming but is hopelessly dying and toss it in the purifying flames.
The doctor extended his hand without looking up—and Ignatiev hurried, embarrassed, afraid to do the wrong thing, handed him his pile of test results, references, X rays, and the envelope with one hundred fifty rubles—the envelope with an unseasonal Santa Claus in a painted sleigh with presents for the kiddies. Ignatiev began to look, and saw the doctor. On his head in receding cones sat a cap—a white tiara in blue stripes, a starched ziggurat. Tanned face, eyes lowered onto the papers; and falling powerfully, waterfall-like, terrifying, from his ears down to his waist, in four layers, in forty spirals: a rough, blue Assyrian beard, thick ringlets, black springs, a nocturnal hyacinth. I am Physician of Physicians, Ivanov.
“He’s no Ivanov,” Ignatiev thought in horror. The Assyrian picked up the Santa Claus envelope, lifted it by one corner, and asked, “What’s this?” He looked up.
He had no eyes.
The empty sockets gave off the black abyss of nothingness, the underground entrance to other worlds, on the edges of the dead seas of darkness. And he had to go there.
There were no eyes, but there was a gaze. He was looking at Ignatiev.
“What is this?” the Assyrian repeated.
“Money,” Ignatiev said, moving the letters.
“What for.”
“I wanted to . . . they said . . . for the operation, I don’t know. You take it. (Ignatiev horrified himself.) I was told, I wanted to. I was told, I asked.”
“All right.”
The professor opened a drawer and swept rosy-cheeked Santa with presents for Valerik into it, his tiara shifted on his head.
“Is surgical intervention indicated for you?”
Indicated? It’s indicated. Isn’t it indicated for everyone? I don’t know. There are the test results, lots of figures, all kinds of things . . . The doctor looked down toward the papers, went through the results, good dependable results with clear purple stamps: all the projections of a cone—circle and triangle—were there; all the Pythagorean symbols, the cabalistic secrets of medicine, the backstage mysticism of the Order. The professor’s clean, surgical nail went down the graphs: thrombocytes . . . erythrocytes . . . Ignatiev watched the nail jealously, mentally pushing it along: don’t stop, everything is fine, good numbers, sturdy, clean, roasted nuts. Secretly proud: marvelous, healthy zeros without worms; the fours like excellently built footstools, the eights well-washed eyeglasses; everything suitable, satisfactory. Operation indicated. The Assyrian’s finger stopped. What’s the matter? Something wrong? Ignatiev craned his neck and looked anxiously. Doctor, is it that two over there that you don’t like? Really, you’re right, heh-heh, it’s not quite . . . a small bruise, I agree, but it’s accidental, don’t pay any attention, read on, there are all those sixes over there, spilled like Armenian grapes. What, they’re no good, either? . . . Wait, wait, let’s figure this out. The Assyrian moved his finger and went down to the bottom of the page, then flipped through the papers, made a neat pile, and clipped it. He took out the chest X ray and held it up to the light for a long time. He added it to the pile. I think he’s willing, thou
ght Ignatiev. But anxiety blew like a draft through his heart, opening doors, moving curtains. But that too would pass. Actually, more precisely, that was exactly what would pass. I’d like to know what it would be like after. My poor heart, your apple orchards still stir. The bees still buzz and dig in the pink flowers, weighed down by heavy pollen. But the evening sky is darkening, the air is still, the shiny axe is being sharpened. Don’t be afraid. Don’t look. Shut your eyes. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. Everything will be very fine.
I wonder if the doctor had it done, too? Should I ask? Why not? I’ll ask. No, I’m afraid. I’m afraid and it’s impolite and maybe I’ll spoil everything. If you ask, your dry tongue moving meekly; smiling tensely, gazing beseechingly into the nightmarish dark gaping like a black hole between his upper and lower lids, vainly trying to meet his gaze, to find a saving human point, find something, some sort of—well, maybe not a welcome, not a smile, no no, I understand—but even scorn, fastidiousness, even revulsion, some answer, some glimmer, some sign, somebody stir, wave your hand, do you hear me? Is anyone in there? I feel around in the dark, I feel the dark, it’s thick; I see nothing, I’m afraid I’ll slip and fall, but where can I fall if there’s no path beneath my feet? I am alone here. I am afraid. Life, are you here? . . . Doctor, excuse me please, sorry to bother you, but just one question: tell me, is Life there?
As if in foreboding, something in his chest cringed, scurried, crouched, eyes shut, arms over its head. Be patient. It will be better for everyone.
The Assyrian let him look into his deep starless pits once more.
“Sit in the chair, please.”
And I will, so what, it’s no big deal, I’ll just go sit, casual-like. Ignatiev settled in the leather reclining chair. Rubber straps on his arms and legs. On the side, a hose, tanks, a manometer.
“General anesthesia?”
The professor was doing something at his desk, with his back to Ignatiev, and he replied reluctantly, after a pause.
“Yes, general anesthesia. We’ll remove it, clean it out, fill the canal.”
“Like a tooth,” thought Ignatiev. He felt a cowardly chill. What unpleasant words. Easy, easy. Be a man. What’s the problem. Easy. It’s not a tooth. No blood. Nothing.
The doctor selected the proper tray. Something jingled on it. With tweezers he selected and placed on a low table, onto a glass medical slide, a long, thin, disgustingly thin needle, thinner than a mosquito’s whine. Ignatiev squinted at it nervously. Knowing what those things were for was horrible, but not knowing was worse.
“What’s that?”
“The extractor.”
“So small? I wouldn’t have thought.”
“Do you think yours is big?” the Assyrian said irritatedly. And he stuck the X ray under his nose, but he could make out nothing but foggy spots. The doctor was already wearing rubber gloves fitted tightly over his hands and wrists, and with a bent tweezers he rummaged among the shiny bent needles and vilely narrowing probes and pulled something out: a parody of scissors with a pike’s jaws. The Assyrian scratched his beard with a rubber finger. Ignatiev thought that the doctor was ruining the sterility and meekly mentioned it aloud.
“What sterility?” The professor raised his eyelids. “I wear gloves to protect my hands.”
Ignatiev smiled weakly, understandingly. Of course, you never know, there are people with diseases. . . . He suddenly realized that he didn’t know how they would drag it out: Through his mouth? His nose? Maybe they make an incision on the chest? Or in the hole between collarbones, where day and night the soft throb continues: sometimes hurrying, sometimes slowing its endless run?
“Doctor, how . . .”
“Quiet!” The Assyrian exclaimed. “Silence! Shut your mouth. Just listen to me. Look at the bridge of my nose. Count to twenty to yourself: one, two . . .”
His nose, mouth, and blue beard were firmly wrapped in white. Between the white mask and the striped tiara the abyss stared from his eyes. Between the two sockets, openings into nowhere, was the bridge of his nose: a tuft of blue hairs on a crumbling mountain range. Ignatiev began looking, turning to ice. The anesthesia hose was moving toward him from the side. A trunk; and from it, the sweet, sweet smell of death. It hung over his face; Ignatiev struggled, but gave up, tied down by rubber straps, stifled his last, too-late doubts—and they splashed in all directions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw depression, his loyal girlfriend, pressed against the window, bidding him farewell, weeping, blocking the white light, and almost voluntarily inhaled the piercing, sweet smell of blossoming nonexistence, once, twice, and more, without moving his eyes from the Assyrian emptiness.
And there, in the depths of the sockets, in the otherworldly crevasses, a light went on, a path appeared, stumps of black, charred branches grew, and with a soft jolt Ignatiev was sucked from the chair, forward and up, and was tossed there, on the path, and hurrying—seven, eight, nine, ten, I’m lost—he ran along the stones with his almost nonexistent legs. And Life gasped behind him, and the bars clanged, and Anastasia wailed bitterly, wildly . . .
And I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry for those left behind and I can’t stop and I’m running upward, and huddled low the dacha station flew past, and with Mama and me—a little boy, no, it’s Valerik—and they turn, mouths open, shouting; but I can’t hear them, Valerik raises his little hand, something in his fist, the wind ruffles their hair. . . .
Ringing in the ears, darkness, ringing, oblivion.
•
Ignatiev—Ignatiev?—slowly floated up from the bottom, his head pushing aside the soft, dark rags—a lake of cloth.
He lay in the chair, the straps undone, his mouth dry, his head spinning. In his chest, a pleasant, calm warmth. It felt good.
The bearded man in the white coat was writing something on a medical chart. Ignatiev remembered why he was there—just a simple outpatient operation, he had to have the whatsit removed; what was that word. The hell with it. General anesthesia—that took pull. Not bad.
“Well, doc, can I split?” Ignatiev asked.
“Stay five minutes,” the bearded one said dryly. “So pushy all of a sudden.”
“Did you do it all, no tricks?”
“All.”
“Watch it, if you welshed on the deal, I’ll shake my bucks out of you real fast,” Ignatiev joked.
The doctor looked up from the papers. Well, that was the living end, a real knockout. Holes instead of eyes.
“What’s the matter, pal, lose your eyeballs?” Ignatiev laughed. He liked his new laugh—sort of a squealing bark. Fastlike. “Well, you’re really something, pal! I’m knocked out. Just don’t trip when you go pick up babes.”
He liked the dull spot in his solar plexus. It was boss.
“Hey, man, I’m off. Gimme five. Ciao.”
He slapped the doctor on the back. He bounded down the worn stairs with sturdy, springy steps, with whiplash turns on the landings. So much to do! And everything would work out. Ignatiev laughed. The sun was shining. Loads of babes on the street. Terrif. First off to Anastasia. Show her what’s what! But first, a few jokes, of course. He had made up a few jokes already, his brain was whizzing. “Gotta keep your shotgun clean,” he’d say. He thought that up. And when he left, he’d say, “Stay cool, suck ice.” He was so funny now: no joke, seriously, the life of the party.
Should I go home first or what? Home later, now I have to write to the right place and tell the right people that a doctor calling himself Ivanov takes bribes. Write it in full detail, with a lacing of humor: he has no eyes, but all he sees is money. Who’s keeping an eye on things, anyway?
And then home. I’ve had it keeping that preemie home. It’s not sanitary, you know. Arrange a bed in a home for him. If they give me trouble, I’ll have to slip them something. That’s the way the game is played. It’s normal.
Ignatiev pushed the post office door.
“What would you like?” the curly-haired girl asked.
“A
clean sheet of paper,” Ignatiev said. “Just a clean sheet.”
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis
FIRE AND DUST
WHERE is she now, that lunatic Svetlana, nicknamed Pipka, about whom some people, with the nonchalance of youth, used to say, “But I mean, is Pipka really human?” and others, exasperated: “Why do you let her in? Keep an eye on your books! She’ll walk off with everything!” No, they were wrong: the only things assignable to Pipka’s conscience are a light blue Simenon and a white wool sweater with knitted buttons, and it was already darned at the elbow anyway. And to hell with the sweater! Much more valuable things had vanished since that time: Rimma’s radiant youth; the childhood of her children; the freshness of her hopes, blue as the morning sky; the secret, joyful trust with which Rimma listened to the voice of the future whispering for her alone—what laurels, flowers, islands, and rainbows had not been promised to her, and where is it all? She didn’t begrudge the sweater; Rimma herself had forcibly thrust Svetlana into that little-needed sweater when she threw the insane girl, half dressed as always, out into the raging autumn one cold, branch-lashed Moscow midnight. Rimma, already in her nightgown, shifted impatiently from one foot to the other in the doorway, pressing her shivering legs together; she kept nodding, advancing, showing Svetlana the door, but Svetlana was trying to get something out, to finish what she had to say, with a nervous giggle, a quick shrug of the shoulders, and in her pretty white face black eyes burned like an insane abyss and the wet abyss of her mouth mumbled in a hurried dither—a hideous black mouth, where the stumps of the teeth made you think of old, charred ruins. Rimma advanced, gaining ground inch by inch, and Svetlana talked on and on and on, waving her hands all about as if she were doing exercises—nocturnal, night-owl, unbelievable exercises—and then, demonstrating the enormous size of something—but Rimma wasn’t listening—she gestured so expansively that she smashed her knuckles against the wall and in her surprise said nothing for a moment, pressing the salty joints to her lips, which seemed singed by her disconnected pronouncements. That was when the sweater was shoved at her—you’ll warm up in the taxi—the door was slammed shut, and Rimma, vexed and laughing, ran to Fedya under the warm blanket. “I barely managed to get rid of her.” The children tossed and turned in their sleep. Tomorrow was an early day. “You could have let her spend the night,” muttered Fedya through his sleep, through the warmth, and he was very handsome in the red glow of the night-light. Spend the night? Never! And where? In old man Ashkenazi’s room? The old man tossed and turned incessantly on his worn-out couch, smoked something thick and smelly, coughed, and in the middle of the night would get up and go to the kitchen for a drink of water from the tap, but all in all it wasn’t bad, he wasn’t a bother. When guests came he would loan chairs, get out a jar of marinated mushrooms, untangle rats’ nests of sticky tinned fruit drops for the children. They would seat him at one end of the table and he would chuckle, swing his legs, which didn’t reach the floor, and smoke into his sleeve: “Never mind, you young people, be patient—I’ll die soon and the whole apartment will be yours.” “May you live to be a hundred, David Danilich,” Rimma would reassure him, but still it was pleasant to dream about the time when she would be mistress of an entire apartment, not a communal one, but her own, when she would do major remodeling—cover the preposterous five-cornered kitchen from top to bottom in tile and get a new stove. Fedya would defend his dissertation, the children would go to school—English, music, figure skating. . . . What else could she imagine? A lot of people envied them in advance. But of course it was not tile, not well-rounded children that shone from the wide-open spaces of the future like a rainbow-colored fire, a sparkling arc of wild rapture (and Rimma honestly wished old man Ashkenazi long life—there’s time enough for everything); no, something greater, something completely different, important, overwhelming, and grand clamored and glittered up ahead, as though Rimma’s ship, sailing along a dark channel through blossoming reeds, were on the verge of coming into the green, happy, raging sea.
White Walls Page 9