White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

  THE FAKIR

  FILIN turned up—unexpectedly as always—on the phone, with an invitation to have a look at his new flame. The evening’s program was clear: a crisp white tablecloth, light, warmth, special puff-pastry pirozhki à la Tmutarakan, the nicest music coming from somewhere in the ceiling, and engrossing conversation. Blue curtains everywhere, cupboards with his collections, beads hanging along the walls. Then there might be new toys: a snuffbox with a portrait of a lady in transports over her own pink naked powderiness, a beaded purse, perhaps an Easter egg, or something else useless but valuable.

  Filin wasn’t offensive to the eye, either—clean, not large, wearing an at-home velvet jacket, a small hand weighted down with a ring. And not a clichéd, corny, “ruble fifty with the box” ring—why no, his is straight from an excavation, Venetian if he’s not lying, or a setting of a coin from, God help me, Antioch, or something even grander than that. . . . That was Filin. He’ll sit in a chair dangling his slipper, fingers folded in a tent, eyebrows like pitch—marvelous Anatolian eyes like soot, a dry silvery beard that rustled, black only around the mouth, as if he had been eating coal.

  Plenty to look at.

  Filin’s women weren’t run-of-the-mill, either—collector’s rarities. Either a circus performer, say, twisting on a trapeze silvery scales shimmering, to a drum roll; or simply a young woman, a mama’s girl who dabbled in water colors, a brain the size of a kopek but dazzlingly white, so that Filin, in issuing his invitation to view, will warn you to bring sunglasses to avoid snow blindness.

  Some people privately didn’t approve of Filin, with all those rings, pastries, and snuffboxes; they giggled over his raspberry robe with tassels and those supposedly silver Mongol slippers with turned-up noses; and it was funny that in his bathroom he had a special brush for his beard and hand cream: a bachelor . . . But whenever he called, they came; and secretly always worried: would he invite them again? Would he let them sit in the warmth and light, in comfort and luxury, and in general—what did he ever see in us ordinary people, what does he need us for?

  “If you’re not busy tonight, please come at eight. Meet Alisa, a cha-arming creature.”

  “Thank you, thank you, of course.”

  Well, as usual, at the last minute! Yura reached for his razor, and Galya, slithering into her panty hose like a snake, left instructions with her daughter: the kasha is in the pot, don’t open the door to anyone, do your homework, and straight to bed. And don’t hang on me, let go, we’re late already. Galya stuffed plastic bags into her purse: Filin lived in a high-rise, with a grocery store on the ground floor; maybe they’ll have herring oil, or something else.

  Beyond the house the boundary road lay like a hoop of darkness where the frosty wind howled, the cold of uninhabited plains penetrated your clothes, and the world for a second seemed as horrible as a graveyard; and they didn’t want to wait for a bus or be squashed in the metro and they got a taxi; and lounging comfortably, cautiously berated Filin for his velvet jacket, for his collector’s passion, for the unknown Alisa: where’s the last one, that Ninochka? nowhere to be found now; and wondered whether Matvei Matveich would be there, and roundly denounced Matvei Matveich.

  They had met him at Filin’s and were charmed by the old man: those stories of his about the reign of Anna Ivanovna and those pastries, and the steam from English tea, and blue-and-gold collector’s cups, and Mozart bubbling from somewhere up above, and Filin caressing the guests with his Mephistophelian eyes—and, oh, heads spinning—they got Matvei Matveich to invite them. Some visit! He received them in the kitchen, the floor was made of planks, the walls brown and bare, a horrible neighborhood, nothing but fences and potholes, and he was wearing jogging pants that were threadbare and the tea was stale and the jam crystallized, and he just thumped the jar on the table, stuck a spoon in it—dig it out yourselves, dear guests. And you had to smoke on the landing: asthma, please understand. And Anna Ivanovna was a flop, too. They sat down—the hell with the tea—to listen to his purring speech about palace intrigues, all kinds of revolts; but the old man kept untying these awful folders and poking them with his finger shouting about land reform and that Kuzin, the mediocrity clerk backstabber, won’t let him get published and has set the whole department against Matvei Matveich, but here, here: invaluable documents, he’d been collecting them all his life. Galya and Yura wanted to hear about villains, torture, the ice house, and the dwarf wedding, but Filin wasn’t there to steer the conversation to interesting topics, and all they heard that evening was Ku-u-zin! Ku-u-uzin! and the finger-jabbing of the files, and the valerian sedative drops. They put the old man to bed and left, and Galya tore her panty hose on the old man’s chair.

  “What about Vlasov the bard?” Yura recalled.

  “Bite your tongue!”

  With him, it was just the opposite; but the shame was terrible: they picked him up at Filin’s, too, and invited him to their house and invited lots of guests to hear him sing, spent two hours in line to get a special cake. They locked their daughter in her room and the dog in the kitchen. Vlasov the bard came, grim, with his guitar, didn’t even try the cake: cream softens the voice and he wanted his voice hoarse. He sang a couple of songs: “Aunt Motya, your shoulders, your pecs and cheeks, like Nadia Comaneci, are developed by gymnastique . . .” Yura made a fool of himself, showing his ignorance, loudly whispering in the middle of the song, “I forget, what part are the pecs?” Galya grew anxious, and, hand laid on heart in emotion, said he must sing “Friends”—it’s such a marvelous, marvelous song. He had sung it at Filin’s—gently, sadly—about “around the table covered with oilcloth, over a bottle of beer” sit a group of old friends, bald, all losers. Each one’s life went wrong, each has his own sorrow: “one can’t love, the other can’t rule”—and no one can help, alas!—but at least they’re together, they’re friends, they need one another, and isn’t that the most important thing in life? You listen and you feel that—yes-yes-yes—the same thing happened in your life, yes, just like it. “What a song. A hit.” Yura whispered. Vlasov the bard frowned even more, looked off into the distance—off into that imagined room where the mutually admiring baldies were uncapping a distant beer; he strummed the guitar and began sadly, “around the table covered with oilcloth . . .” Julie, locked in the kitchen, scratched at the floor and howled. “With a bottle of beer,” Vlasov continued. “Woof woof woof,” the dog persisted. Someone snorted, the bard put his hand on the strings with an injured air, and took a cigarette. Yura went to deal with Julie.

  “Is that autobiographical?” some idiot asked reverently.

  “What? All my songs are autobiographical to a degree.”

  Yura returned, the bard tossed away his butt, and concentrated. “Around the table, covered with oilcloth . . .” A tortured howl came from the kitchen.

  “A musical dog,” the bard said viciously.

  Galya dragged the resisting German shepherd to the neighbors, the bard hurriedly finished the song—the howling came through the co-op’s walls—he shortened his program, and then in the foyer as he zipped up his jacket announced with disgust that he usually charged two rubles a head but since they didn’t know how to organize a creative atmosphere, he’d settle for a ruble apiece. And Galya ran back to the neighbors—a nightmare, lend me a ten—and they, also just before payday, dug around, collecting change and shaking the kids’ piggy bank to the howls of the robbed children and the barking of overjoyed Julie.

  Yes, Filin knows how to deal with people, and we sure don’t. Well, maybe next time it’ll go better.

  It wasn’t quite eight yet—just enough time to stand in line for pâté in the store at the bottom of the block of flats where Filin lived. There’s no trouble finding cows in our suburb, but you just try finding pâté. At three minutes to eight they got into the elevator, and Galya, as usual, looked around and said, “I could live in an elevator like this,” then the polished parquet floor of the landing
, the brass plate: “I. I. Filin,” the bell; and then the man himself on the doorstep, black eyes glowing, head tilted to one side: “Punctuality is the politeness of princes . . .”

  And it’s so pleasant hearing that, those words, as if Filin were a sultan and they truly were princes, Galya in her inexpensive coat and Yura in his jacket and knit cap.

  And they floated in, the royal pair, chosen for one evening, into the warmth and light, the sweet piano trills, and proceeded to the table where the hothouse roses refuse to acknowledge the frost, wind, darkness that have besieged Filin’s impregnable tower, powerless to penetrate.

  Something elusive is different in the apartment . . . ah, they see: the glass case with the beaded trifles has been moved, the candelabra has moved to the other wall, the arch leading to the back room is curtained, and moving that curtain aside . . . Alisa, the allegedly charming creature, comes out and offers her hand.

  “Allochka.”

  “Well, yes, she is Allochka, but we will call her Alisa, isn’t that right? Please, sit down,” said Filin. “Well, I recommend the pâté. A rarity. You know, pâtés like this . . .”

  “I see you got it downstairs,” Yura said happily. “ ‘We go down. From the conquered heights. Even the gods descended’—isn’t that how it goes?”

  Filin smiled thinly and twitched an eyebrow—to say maybe I got it downstairs and maybe I didn’t. You have to know everything, don’t you? Galya mentally kicked her husband for his tactlessness.

  “Appreciate the tartlets,” Filin started anew. “I’m afraid that you are the last people to have them on this sinful earth.”

  Tonight he called the pirozhki “tartlets” for some reason—probably because of Alisa.

  “Why, what happened, have they stopped selling flour? On a global scale?” Yura was in good humor, rubbing his hands, his bony nose red in the heat. The tea gurgled.

  “Nothing of the kind. What is flour?” Filin’s beard nodded. “Some sugar, Galya. . . . What is flour? The secret is lost, my friends. The last person to know the ancient recipe is dying—I just got a call. Ninety-eight, a stroke. Try them, Alisa; may I pour you tea in my favorite cup?”

  Filin’s gaze grew misty, as if hinting at the possibilities of special closeness that could result from such intimate contact with his beloved dishes. The charming Alisa smiled. What was so charming about her? Her black hair shone as if it were greased, a hook nose, mustache. Simple dress, knit, the color of a pickle. Big deal. Better women than she have sat here, and where were they now?

  “And just think,” Filin was saying. “Just two days ago I ordered the tartlets from this Ignaty Kirillych. Just yesterday he baked them. Just this morning I got them, each wrapped in tissue paper. And now, a stroke. They called me from Sklifosovsky hospital.” Filin bit into a puff pastry bomb, raised his handsome brows, and sighed.

  “When still a lad, Ignaty worked at the Yar, and the old pastry chef Kuzma gave him the secret of these pastries on his deathbed. Just try them.” Filin wiped his beard. “And Kuzma had worked in Petersburg in his day at Wolf and Beranger—the famous pastry shop. They say that before his fatal duel, Pushkin dropped by Wolf’s and asked for tartlets. That day Kuzma was sleeping off a binge and hadn’t baked any. Well, the manager said, we don’t have any. These people are like that, Alexander Sergeyevich. Wouldn’t you like a bouchée? Or a cream horn? Pushkin got upset, waved his hat, and left. Well, you know what happened later. Kuzma overslept, and Pushkin is in his grave.”

  “Oh, my god,” said Galya.

  “Oh, yes. And do you know it had repercussions on everyone? Wolf shot himself. Beranger converted to Russian Orthodoxy, the manager donated thirty thousand to a religious institution, and Kuzma simply lost his mind. He kept muttering, ‘Oh, Alexander Sergeyevich. . . . You didn’t have my tartlets . . . If only you had waited a bit . . .’ ”

  Filin tossed another pirozhok in his mouth and crunched. “However, that Kuzma lived to our day. He passed on the recipe to his students with shaking hands. Ignaty got the dough; someone else, the filling. Well, then came the revolution, the civil war. The one who knew the filling joined the Social Revolutionaries. Ignaty lost track of him. A few years later—Ignaty was still with the restaurant—something prompted him, he came out of the kitchen, and there at a table is that man with a lady. He’s got a monocle, a mustache—unrecognizable. Ignaty runs over to him as is, covered with flour. ‘Come with me, comrade.’ The man had no choice. White as a sheet, into the kitchen he went. ‘Bastard, tell me the meat filling.’ What could he do, his past could cause him trouble. He told. ‘Tell me the cabbage filling.’ He trembled, but he did it. ‘And now the fish.’ That was absolutely top secret. He said nothing. Ignaty: ‘The fish!’ And he picked up his rolling pin. The man said nothing. Then suddenly he screamed and ran out. They chased him, tied him up, and looked at him—he’d lost his mind, he was rolling his eyes and foaming at the mouth. So the fish remained a secret. Yes . . . That Ignaty Kirillych was an interesting old man, so fastidious. How he felt puff pastry, what a feel for it! . . . He baked at home. He’d draw the curtains, double lock the door. I would say, ‘Ignaty Kirillych, dear man, share your secret, what’s it to you?’ but he wouldn’t budge. He kept waiting for a worthy recipient. And now the stroke . . . Try one.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” the charming Alisa said. “How can I eat them now? I’m always so sorry for the last of anything. . . . My mother had a brooch before the war. . . .”

  “The last one, an accidental one!” sighed Filin and took another pirozhok.

  “The last storm cloud,” Galya entered the game.

  “The last of the Mohicans,” added Yura.

  “No, my mother had this pearl brooch before the war. . . .”

  “Everything is transitory, dear Alisa,” Filin said, chewing in satisfaction. “Everything ages—dogs, women, pearls. Let us sigh over the fleeting nature of existence and thank the creator for giving us a chance to taste this and that at the feast of life. Eat and wipe your tears.”

  “Perhaps he’ll regain consciousness, that Ignaty?”

  “He can’t,” the host assured them. “Forget about it.”

  They chewed. Music sang overhead. It was good.

  “What new pleasures do you have?” Yura asked.

  “Ah . . . I’m glad you reminded me. Wedgwood—cups and saucers. Creamer. See, blue on the shelf. Why I’ll just . . . Here . . .”

  “Ah . . .” Galya touched the cup carefully with her finger—white carefree dances on a blue foggy meadow.

  “Do you like it, Alisa?”

  “Nice . . . Now before the war my mother had . . .”

  “Do you know where I got it? Guess . . . From a partisan.”

  “In what sense?”

  “Just listen. It’s a curious story.” Filin made a tent with his fingers and looked lovingly at the shelf where the captive service sat cautiously, afraid of falling. “I was wandering around villages this fall with a rifle. I stopped by one hut. A man brought out some fresh milk for me. In a cup. I look—it’s real Wedgwood. How could it be? Well, we got to talking, his name is Uncle Sasha, I have the address somewhere . . . well, it doesn’t matter. Here’s what I learned. During the war he was a partisan in the woods. Early morning. German plane flying over. Bzzzzzzz,” Filin added an imitation. “Uncle Sasha looked up just when the pilot spat—right in his face. An accident, of course. But Uncle Sasha’s temper flared, naturally, he went bang with his gun—and hit the German. Also accidentally. The plane fell, they looked inside—five crates of cocoa, and the sixth had these dishes. He must have been delivering breakfast. I bought the set. The creamer is cracked, but that’s all right. Considering the circumstances.”

  “Your partisan is a liar.” Yura was delighted, he looked around and slapped his thigh. “What a great liar. Fantastic!”

  “Nothing of the sort.” Filin was not pleased. “Of course, I can’t rule out that he’s no partisan at all but just a vulgar little thief, but you know
. . . somehow I prefer to believe.”

  He grew huffy and took the cup back.

  “Of course, you have to believe people.” Galya stepped on Yura’s foot under the table. “An amazing thing happened to me, too. Remember, Yura? I bought a wallet, brought it home, and inside were three rubles. No one believes it.”

  “Why not, I believe it. It happens,” Alisa mused. “Now, my mother . . .”

  They talked about the amazing, about premonitions, and dreams. Alisa had a girlfriend who had predicted her entire life ahead of time—marriage, two children, divorce, division of the apartment and property. Yura told in great detail how a friend’s car was stolen and how the police cleverly figured the thief’s identity and caught him, but the real trick was—he couldn’t remember it right now. Filin described a dog he knew that unlocked the door with its own key and heated up dinner for its masters.

  “Really, how?” the women gasped.

  “Easily. They have a French oven, electric, with a control panel. Push a button, everything goes on. The dog looks at the time: goes to the kitchen, works there; well, warms something up for itself, too. The owners come home from work and the soup is on the boil, the bread sliced, the table set. Convenient.”

  Filin talked, smiled, turned his ankle, glanced over at satisfied Alisa, the music died down, and the city made itself heard through the windows. Dark tea steamed in their cups, sweet cigarette smoke curled upward, the roses gave off their scent and beyond the window the Sadovoye Ring Road quietly squealed beneath tires and people cheerfully plowed through the streets, the city glowed in wreaths of golden street lamps, frosty rainbow rings, multicolored crunchy snow, while the capital’s sky sowed new charming snow, fresh, just made. And just think, this entire feast, this evening of miracles was created especially for this completely unspecial Allochka, extravagantly renamed Alisa—there she sat in her vegetable dress, mustached mouth open, delightedly staring at the all-powerful gentleman who with a wave of the hand, the flicker of an eyebrow can transform the world to the point of unrecognizability.