Sergei raised his eyes on high and made out, high on the wall, in the warm silky shadows, a pair of glasses, a mustache. . . . Lenochka, do you remember Papa? Of course. Maria Maximovna went to the kitchen to get sweet rolls, Sergei leaned over to pat Lenochka’s hand; she offered it to him as if it were an object and explained that actually she barely remembered her father and had only said that for Mother’s sake. . . . She remembered the settled March snow, full of holes, the lacquered shine of the car, and how it smelled inside, and the chauffeur’s steel teeth, his cap . . . The cloud of her father’s cologne, the creak of the seat, his angry nape, and the naked trees flashing past the window—they were going somewhere . . . And another day—May, golden, with a harsh sweet wind coming through the window, and the apartment upside down, either the carpets being sent to the cleaners or the winter things being put away in mothballs, everything shifted, people running back and forth. And Pavel Antonovich’s wrathful horrible shout in the hallway, thumping footsteps on the floor; he throws something heavy, bursts into the room, and powerful and red, he pushes through, trampling the teddy bear, trampling the doll’s tea, and the May sun was indignant, shaking and splashing from the lenses of his glasses. The reason was trifling—the dog might have made a mess near the door. But in fact the dog was nothing, an excuse, it was just that life had begun to turn its not-good side toward Pavel Antonovich. And they didn’t have anything to drive in, anymore.
His mother-in-law returned with the rolls and fresh tea, Lenochka put her hand back in its place, a used object. Lenochka was rather cool for a new bride, she smiled too politely, she burned at half-steam; and what was hidden, what thoughts flashed behind those watercolor eyes? Pale cheeks, hair like seaweed along those cheeks, weak hands, light feet—it was all enchanting, and even though Sergei basically liked his women sturdy, colorful, and black-browed, like the dolls made in Vyatka, he could not resist Lenochka’s watery charms. She entwined herself around him, not hot, her soul friable and inaccessible, with puny female problems: a cough; my shoes are too big; drive a nail in right there, Seryozha—he hammered, twisting the shoes as small as saucers in his hands, everything falls off the tiny Snow Fairy—and rubbed Lenochka’s narrow back with oil of turpentine.
He married in fear and delight, hazarding a guess, understanding nothing: neither who Lenochka was nor why he had chosen her; he’d find out with time. She was a frail girl, and he was her protector and support, and his mother-in-law was a sweet lady, amiable and tolerably silly, a home economics teacher. She taught girls to sew aprons, to bind seams, or something. Theory of sewing, the basics of fire safety. “A stitch is the intertwining of thread with fabric between two needle punctures.” “A fire is the burning of objects not intended for burning.” Cozy, feminine work. At home, there was family coziness, the family hearth, the modest and respectable space of a three-room apartment, the legacy of the severe Pavel Antonovich. The hallway was lined with books, something was always cooking in the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen was a tiny room, a cell—they always built this way, Seryozha dear, for the maids; this is where that horrible Panya lived, and Klava with the pink comb: do you want me to turn it into your study, a man needs a study of his own. Of course he liked. A small room, but totally his now—what could be better? The table by the window, the chair here, a bookshelf behind him. In the summer, poplar fluff would fly in through the window, and birdsong and children’s voices . . . Your hand, Maria Maximovna. Allow me to kiss it. There, isn’t everything fine?
Why, she can’t even imagine how fine it is, what a miracle, what a gift from the gods that room and that family were—for him, an orphan, a boy without a name, without a father, a mother. They invented it all for him at the orphanage: name, surname, age. He had no childhood, his childhood had been burnt up, bombed at an unknown railroad station; someone pulled him out of the fire, threw him on the ground, turning him over and over, slapping his head with a fur hat to put out the flames. . . . He hadn’t understood that the hat had saved him, a big black smelly hat—it knocked the memory out of him, he had nightmares about that hat, it screamed and blew up and deafened him—he had stammered a long time afterward, crying and covering his head with his hands when they tried to dress him at the home. How old had he been—three, four? And now, in the mid-70s, he, a grown man, felt his heart flipflop when he passed a store with fur hats on display. He would stop and stare, forcing himself to do it, trying to remember: Who am I? Where am I from? Whose son am I? After all, I did have a mother, someone gave birth to me, loved me, was taking me somewhere.
In the summer he played on trampled playgrounds with children just like him, burned and nameless, pulled out from under wheels. They held hands and formed two lines. “Ali Baba, hey!” “What do you say?” “Pull the line away!” “From which end of the day?” “From dawn and send Seryozha this way.” And he would run in his gray orphanage pants from one line to the other, from his family into another, to push apart the thin clasped hands, and to join them, the strangers, if he could, feeling proud of his strength yet a little treacherous too.
Long winters, hungry eyes, shaved heads, some adult giving a quick pat on the head as he ran past; the smell of mice in the sheets, the dull light. The older boys beat him, demanded that he steal for them, tempting him with a chunk of undercooked bread under his nose—we’ll share it with you, climb through that narrow window, you’re skinny, you’ll squeeze through. But someone invisible and inaudible seemed to be shaking her head, eyes closed: don’t, don’t take it. Was it his mother, giving him a sign from dark, shattered time, from the other side, beyond the hat; were incorporeal powers protecting him? He finished school and his file said: “Morally stable, orderly.” His longing for his mother, who was nowhere, ate away at him quietly. The idea that in the final analysis, everyone was descended from the apes, somehow did not console him. He invented mothers for himself, imagined himself the son of a favorite teacher—she had lost a small boy and she was looking for him, asking everyone if they had seen him. Skinny and afraid of a hat? And he, he was right there, in the front row, and she didn’t even know it. She would take a good look and cry out, “Seryozha, is that you? Why didn’t you say anything?” He was the son of the cook—he helped slice bread in the kitchen, glancing at her white cap and quick hands, trembling, waiting for the recognition to come; he stared at women in the street—in vain, they all ran past.
Now, keeping it secret from Lenochka, he wanted to be the son of Maria Maximovna. Hadn’t she had a son who burned to death in some distant, nameless railroad station? The burning of objects not intended for burning? . . . The cozy room beyond the kitchen, snow beyond the window, the yellow lamp shade, the old wallpaper with maple leaves, the old house—if he could only remember . . . Didn’t it seem as if he had lived here, as if he were recognizing something? . . .
Nonsense; Maria Maximovna never had a lost boy, the only thing she lost was the fur coat, a good fur coat with a silk lining embroidered with purple lilies of the valley. Pavel Antonovich, a big man with a lot of stars on his uniform, took that luxurious item from a hook on a wall in a German house—he liked it and he didn’t waste time. He took it and sent it back home.
What a fur coat it had been. What a shame, Seryozha. You must know the vile feeling of being robbed. I didn’t even have time to turn around, even to gasp—they switched them. Stuck me with the cheap squirrel coat, and not even new, as I learned later: it fell apart at the seams. I think it must have been stolen. Just imagine the situation—Pavel Antonovich’s wife robbed, and wearing a stolen coat . . . The worst part was having to confess that I had gone to the flea market: I had done it on the sly. . . . Oh, it was terrible just to look at him: a geyser of anger. Robbed . . . He couldn’t stand things like that. He, a military doctor, an honored man who had given his whole life to science—and to people—and then something like this. People were in great awe of him then, it was later that they calumnied him, insulted him, forced him into retirement—him, such a respected specialist
in infectious diseases. They forgot all his achievements, his bravery and courage, forgot how he had battled the plague in the twenties and thirties—and how he conquered it, Seryozha. Risking his life every minute. He had no patience for cowards.
It’s a horrible thing, the plague. You don’t hear too much about it nowadays, just the rare case here or there—which, incidentally, is thanks to Pavel Antonovich—but back then it was an epidemic. Infected steppes, villages, whole regions . . . Pavel Antonovich and his colleagues set up experiments: who is spreading the plague? All right, rats; but which kind? Just imagine; it turned out that all kinds of rats were responsible. Domestic, attic, ship, sewer, migrant rats. Moreover, all those innocent-looking bunnies, gophers, even little mice . . . Gerbils, hamsters, moles. Look, I couldn’t believe my ears when Pavel Antonovich told me, but he insisted: camels. Understand? You can’t trust anyone. Who would have thought? Yes, yes, camels get the plague too. And can you imagine what it’s like doing experiments on camels? Camels are huge. They had to catch one, infect it, take samples from it; and all by themselves, with their own hands. They kept it penned up, fed it, shoveled its manure. And it didn’t want to give samples, and it spat at them, too—plague-ridden spit. And it tried to hit them in the face.
I tell you, doctors are saints, I always say that. And then . . .? And then, when they are sure an animal is infected, they put it to sleep, of course. What else could they do? It would infect the others, wouldn’t it?
Then the war began and Pavel Antonovich was reassigned. Yes, it meant even more work. The war, the war . . . Why am I telling you about it, you went through all that yourself?
It was during the war that they met, his mother-in-law and Pavel Antonovich. They married and saw each other sporadically. He liked that she was so young and lively . . . He wanted to dress her nicely, that’s why he sent the fur. . . . And he was pleased with it too: why don’t you wear the fur, Mashenka. . . . He worried about it, got mothballs for the summer. And then a blow like that . . .
A gentle, marvelous, understanding woman, that Maria Maximovna. Just one quirk—can’t forget that fur coat. She’s a woman, those things are important to them. We all have our own memories. She tells him about her fur coat, Sergei tells her about the fur hat. She sympathized. Lenochka smiled at both, soaring in her vague thoughts. Lenochka is steady and passionless, a sister instead of a wife. Mother and sister—what more could a lost boy want?
Sergei put up shelves in his cubbyhole and placed favorite books on them. If only he could put a cot in there, too. But he went to sleep in the bedroom with Lenochka. At night he lay sleepless, looking at her quiet face with pink shadows near the eyes, and wondered: who is she? What does she think about, what does she dream? If you ask, she shrugs and says nothing. Never raises her voice, if he tracks snow into the house she doesn’t notice, if he smokes in the bedroom she doesn’t care. . . . She reads whatever comes her way. If it’s Camus, fine; if it’s Sergeyev-Tsensky, that’s fine, too. She gave off a chill. The daughter of mustachioed, bespectacled Pavel Antonovich . . . Strange.
Pavel Antonovich . . . He hangs on the wall in the living room, in a frame, and night shadows cross his face. An oak grew and collapsed. Collapsed a long time ago, Lenochka doesn’t even remember him. But he’s still here—wandering up and down the hallway, making the floorboards creak, touching the doorknob. He runs his finger along the wallpaper, the maple leaves, along the bookshelves—he left his daughter a good inheritance. Listens for the squeak of a rat. Domestic, attic, field, ship, migrant . . . You animal, you, tell me your name: are you the death of me? will you eat me? I’m not your death, I won’t eat you: I’m just a bunny, a gray bunny. . . . Rabbits also carry plague. A particularly dangerous infection . . . The prognosis is extremely poor. . . . In case of suspected infection with the plague send an urgent report. . . . The patients and everyone who has been in contact with them will be quarantined. Was he afraid? Such an important man. Terrible in his wrath and honest in his work. But why that fur coat?
And what if Pavel Antonovich were Sergei’s father? What if he had had another wife before Maria Maximovna? Surface out of nonexistence, take on a sturdy chain of ancestors—Pavel Antonovich, Anton Felixovich, Felix Kazimirovich . . . Why not? It’s a realistic possibility. . . .
He took the fur coat from the hook, turned it inside out—fur inside, lilies of the valley outside—and the tissue paper rustled. Twine! Bitte. He rested his knee on the package, pulled tight, knotted the twine with his clean medical fingers. One more knot. Tugged—it’ll hold. He took it, he stooped to that. For the tangled tracks, the explosion, his son’s singed head, the mother who went up in flames, the hat that knocked out the child’s memory. The face with the closed eyes floated up again, shaking its head: don’t, don’t take it. Father, don’t take it! Three years later, it was stolen at the market. How he shouted! Panya, the maid, was in on it, naturally. Think about it—to disappear like that, in the twinkling of an eye. . . . Naturally, it was a gang. Maria Maximovna would have let it go, but Pavel Antonovich, with his character, simply could not bear it. Panya had to be arrested. Yes, yes! To whom did you pass the fur coat? Who are your co-conspirators? When did you enter into a criminal conspiracy? How much were you supposed to get for fingering the job? Panya was a stupid woman, uneducated, and she babbled some nonsense, gave conflicting testimony; it was disgusting to hear. In short—they convicted her. But the coat was never found. Gone. Warm, curly, with the silky, slippery lining.
“I’m hearing this for the fifth time,” Sergei said, angrily pulling the blanket over himself.
“So what? Mother is still upset.”
“Yes, but how long can she keep it up? You’d think she’s a suffering Akaky Akakiyevich without his overcoat!”
“I don’t understand you. What is it, are your sympathies with the thieves?”
“What does that have to do with it. . . . And besides, didn’t he steal it?”
“Papa? Papa was the most honest of men.”
An uneducated woman, that Panya. She split, vanished, disappeared. A village woman, her husband died at the front. The pink comb. No, Klava had the comb. No face, no voice—just a total blank. He was Panya’s son. Perhaps; perhaps. His father died, and she fled with him through swamps, sinking; pushed her way through forests, tripping; begged for hot water at railroad stations, wailing. The train, the explosion. The tracks turned into corkscrews, the hat across his face, the black hat to knock out his memory. You lie there, peering into the dark—deeper, deeper, to the limit—no, there’s a wall there. Panya lost him at the station. She was taken away unconscious. She woke up—where’s Seryozha? Or Petya, Vitya, Yegorushka? Someone must have seen them putting out a burning boy. She goes, seeking him from town to town. Opens all the doors, knocks at all the windows: have you seen him? A dark kerchief and sunken eyes . . . Takes a job working for Pavel Antonovich. Are you the death of me, will you eat me? No, I’m a bunny, a gray bunny. “Panya, come with me, you’ll hold my fur coat.” Wait, don’t go! “Mistress, I’ve lost my son, what do I care for your coat?” Let her stay home. And another twenty-five years in that room. Then Sergei marries Lenochka, comes to the house, Panya takes a good look and recognizes him. . . . She couldn’t have stolen it, she had shut her eyes and shook her head: don’t take it. In case of suspected incident send an urgent report. Domestic, attic, migrant, field . . . Silk lining. Seryozha, drive a nail there.
All right, what if she did steal it! Impoverished, starving like those thieving boys, her house burned down, her son lost, her husband dead in the swamps. What if she had been tempted by the purple lilies of the valley? I won’t hammer a nail into her. I am her son. Panya is my mother, that’s decided, everyone must know. Why did he take the coat from the hook? That coat belonged to Panya’s husband, he should have reached it, crawled there, extended his scorched hand toward it—no, he wouldn’t have taken it, he wouldn’t have stooped to that. But you, high and mighty gentleman, you stooped. And I am married to your
daughter. Pavel Antonovich is my father. Otherwise why does he torment me with the lost fur coat, rustling his medals, sighing behind the wall? Tell me your name. Holding hands tightly, the chain of ancestors walks into the depths, sinking into the dark jelly of time. Stand with us, nameless one, join us. Find your link in the chain. Pavel Antonovich, Anton Felixovich, Felix Kazimirovich. You are our descendant, you lay on our bed, loved Lenochka without blinking an eye, you ate our sweet rolls—every single currant in them we had to tear away from domestic, attic, and field rats; for you we coughed up horrible phlegm and let our nodes swell, for you we infected camels that spat in our face—you can’t get away from us. We built this for you, you nameless and clean boy, this house, this hearth, kitchen, hallway, bedroom, cubby, we lit the lamps and set up the books. We punished those who lifted their hands to steal our property. Ali Baba, hey! What do you say? Pull the line away. From which end of the day?
Panya stole from family. But Pavel Antonovich stole from strangers. Panya confessed. Pavel Antonovich suffered from slander. The scales of justice are balanced. And what did you do? You came, you ate, you judged? In anti-plague goggles and rubber boots, with an enormous syringe, Pavel Antonovich approached the camel. I am your death, I’ll eat you up! Mice get sick, and so do rabbits. Everyone gets sick. Everyone. No need to brag.
White Walls Page 13