White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  Soon Galya and Yura would leave, crawling back to their outskirts, and she would stay, she was allowed. . . . Galya grew depressed. Why, oh, why?

  Filin’s tower nestled in the middle of the capital, a pink mountain, ornamented here and there in the most varied way—with all sorts of architectural doodads, thingamajigs, and whatnots: there were towers on the socles, crenels on the towers, and ribbons and wreaths between the crenellations, and out of the laurel garlands peeked a book, the source of knowledge, or a compass stuck out its pedagogic leg; or, if you looked, you’d see a puffy obelisk in the middle, and standing firmly on it, embracing a sheaf, a firm plaster woman with a clear gaze that rebuffs storms and night, with flawless braids and an innocent chin. . . . You kept expecting trumpets to sound and drums to play something governmental and heroic.

  And the evening sky above Filin and his curlicued palace plays with light—brick, lilac—a real Moscow, theatrical sky.

  While back in their outskirts . . . oh my God it’ll be nothing but thick oily cold darkness, empty in the cool abysses between houses, you can’t even see the houses, they’ve blended into the night sky weighted down by snow clouds with an occasional window burning in an uneven pattern: gold, green, red squares struggling to push aside the polar murk. . . . It’s late, the stores are locked and bolted, the last old lady has rolled out, carrying a packet of margarine and an eggbeater, no one is walking along the streets just for the fun of it, no one is looking around, strolling; everyone has slipped into his own door, drawn the curtains, and is reaching for the TV knob. If you look out the window, you see the boundary road, an abyss of darkness marked by doubled red lights and the yellow beetles of someone’s headlights. . . . Something big drove by, its lights nodding in a pothole. . . . Here comes a stick of light—the headlights in the bus’s forehead, a trembling nucleus of yellow light, live roe of people inside. . . . And beyond the regional road, beyond the last weak strip of life, on the other side of the snow-filled ravine, the invisible sky slipped down, resting its heavy edge on a beet field—right there, on the other side of the ravine. It was impossible, unthinkable, unbearable to realize that the thick darkness extended farther, over the fields that blended into a white roar, over badly constructed fences, over trees pressed into the cold earth where a doomed dull light quivers as if held in an indifferent fist . . . and farther once again, the dark white cold, a crust of forest where the darkness is even thicker, where perhaps a pathetic wolf is forced to live: it comes out on a hill in its rough wool coat smelling of juniper and blood, wildness, disaster, gazes grimly and with disgust at the blind windy vistas, clumps of snow hardening between its cracked claws, and its teeth are gritted in sadness, and a cold tear hangs like a stinking bead on the furry cheek, and everyone is the enemy and everyone is the killer. . . .

  For dessert they had pineapple. And then they had to get out. And it was so far to the house. . . . Avenues, avenues, avenues, dark blizzardy squares, deserted lots, bridges and forests, and more lots, and unexpected not-sleeping factories, light blue inside, and more forests and the snow in the headlights. And at home—boring green wallpaper, the cut-glass lamp fixture in the foyer, the dull cramped feeling and the familiar smell, and the color cover of a woman’s magazine tacked to the wall for decoration. A rosy, disgusting couple on skis. She’s grinning, he’s warming her hands. “Chilled? ” it’s called. “Chilled?” She’d tear it off the wall, but Yura won’t let her, he likes things sporty, optimistic. . . . So let him find a taxi.

  Night had entered the deep hours, all the gates were closed, joyriding trucks zipped by, the starry ceiling hardened with the cold. The rough air had formed into clumps. “Hey, chief, take us to the city line?” Yura ran from car to car. Galya whimpered and switched from foot to foot, hopping on the side of the road, and behind her, in the palace, the last lights were going out, the roses plunging into sleep, Alisa babbling about her mother’s brooch, while Filin, in his tasseled robe, tickled her with his silvery beard: ooh, darling. More pineapple?

  That winter they were invited once more, and Allochka hung around the apartment as if she belonged there, bravely grabbing the expensive dishes and smelling of lily of the valley and yawning.

  Filin demonstrated Valtasarov to his guests—a dreamy bearded muzhik, amazing in his ventriloquism skills. Valtasarov could imitate a knock at the door, a cow being milked, the rattle of a wagon, the distant howl of wolves, and a woman killing cockroaches. He couldn’t do industrial sounds. Yura begged him to try, to at least do a trolley, but he refused flat out: “ ’Fraid of busting my gut.” Galya was uncomfortable: she sensed in Valtasarov the degree of noncivilization from which she and Yura were a stone’s throw—over the city line, beyond the ravine, to the other side.

  She must have gotten weary of late. . . . Just six months ago she would have actively pursued Valtasarov, invited him and a group of friends, served cracked sugar, rye cakes, and radishes—and whatever else the old peasant liked to eat—and he would have mooed and rattled the well chain to general excitement. But now it suddenly was clear to her: it wouldn’t work. If she were to invite him, the guests would laugh and leave, but Valtasarov would stay, ask to spend the night, probably—and she’d have to clear the room, and it was right in the middle of the apartment; he’d go to bed around nine or something, and it would smell of sheep, and shag, and haylofts; at night he’d stumble to the kitchen in the dark for a drink of water and knock over a chair. . . . A quiet curse. Julie would start barking, their daughter would wake up. . . . Or maybe he was a lunatic and would come into their bedroom in the dark . . . in a white shirt and felt boots . . . rummaging. . . . And in the morning, when you don’t feel like seeing anyone at all, when you’re in a hurry to get to work and your hair’s a mess and it’s cold—the old man would sit in the kitchen making a production of having tea, and then pull out illiterate scraps of paper from his pocket: “Girl, they wrote down this medicine for me. . . . It cures everything. . . . How can I get it?”

  No, no, no! Don’t even think about getting involved with him.

  It was only Filin, untiring, who was capable of picking up, feeding, and amusing anyone at all—well, including us, too, of course! Oh, Filin! Generous owner of golden fruit, he hands them out right and left, giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty; he waves his hand, and gardens bloom, women grow more beautiful, bores get inspired, and crows sing like nightingales.

  That’s what he’s like. That’s him.

  And what marvelous friends he has. . . . Ignaty Kirillych, the pastry wizard. Or that ballerina he visits—Doltseva-Elanskaya . . .

  “Of course, that’s her stage name,” said Filin, kicking his foot and admiring the ceiling. “Her maiden name was Dogina, Olga Ieronimovna. Her first husband was Katkin, the second Mousekin. A game of diminishing returns, so to speak. She was quite a hit in her day. Grand dukes stood in line, bringing her topazes by the sack. That was her weakness, smoky topazes. But she was a very simple, heartfelt, progressive woman. After the revolution she decided to give her stones to the people. She was as good as her word: she took off her necklace, tore the thread, poured them out on the table. There was a knock at the door: they came to move more people into her apartment. While they talked and so on, by the time she came back the parrot had eaten them all. Birds, as you know, need stones for their digestion. He’d devoured about five million’s worth—and he flew out the window. She followed. ‘Kokosha, where are you going? What about the people?’ He went south. She followed. She reached Odessa, don’t ask me how. The ship was taking off, the stacks smoking, shouts, suitcases—people fleeing to Constantinople. The parrot landed on the smokestack and sat there. He was warm. So this Olga Dogina, what do you think, she hooked her trained leg over the side of the ship and stopped the ship. And she wouldn’t let go until they got her the parrot. She shook everything out of it down to the last kopek and donated it to the Red Cross. Of course, they had to amputate her leg, but she didn’t give up, she danced in hospitals on cr
utches. Now she’s hundreds of years old, flat on her back, put on weight. I visit her, read Sterne to her. Yes, Olga Dogina, from a merchant family . . . Think what power there is in our people. So much untapped power . . .”

  Galya regarded Filin with adoration. Suddenly he was clear to her—handsome, giving, hospitable . . . Oh, how lucky that mustachioed Allochka was. She didn’t appreciate him, turning her indifferent lemur-shiny eyes at the guests, Filin, the flowers and cookies, as if this were the usual order of things, as if this is just the way things should be. As if far away at the ends of the earth, Galya’s daughter, dog, and “Chilled?” were not languishing, hostages in the dark on the threshold of the aspen forest, quivering with rage.

  For dessert they had grapefruit stuffed with shrimp, and the magical old man drank tea from his saucer.

  A stone lay on her heart.

  At home, in the darkness, listening to the glassy ringing of the aspens, the roar of the sleepless boundary road, the rustles of wolf fur in the distant forest, the slither of the chilled beet greens under their snow blanket, she thought: we’ll never get out of here. Someone unnamed, indifferent, like fate, had decided: this one, this one, and this one will live in a palace. Life will be good for them. And these, and these, and these ones, too, including Galya and Yura, will live there. No, not there, wa-a-ay over there, that’s right, yes. By the ravine, beyond the deserted lots. And don’t be pushy, don’t bother. End of conversation. Wait a minute! What is this? But fate has already turned its back, laughing with its friends, and its iron back is solid—you can’t get its attention by knocking. If you want, you can have hysterics, roll on the floor, kick your legs, if you want, you can lie low and gradually turn wild, collecting portions of cold poison in your teeth.

  They tried clambering, tried switching, posting notices, turned the apartment exchange newsletter into Swiss cheese, gutting it, telephoned in humiliation: “We have a forest . . . wonderful air . . . it’s great for the child, and you don’t need a dacha . . . same to you. You’re nuts!” They filled notebooks with hurried notations: “Zinaida Samoilovna is thinking it over. . . .” “Hana will call back. . . .” “Peter Ivanych has to have a balcony. . . .” Miraculously, Yura found an old woman who had a three-room apartment on the second floor in Patriarshie Prudy, in the middle of Moscow, and she was willful and spoiled. Fifteen families got entangled in an exchange chain, each with its own demands, heart attacks, crazy neighbors, broken hearts, and lost birth certificates. They taxied the capricious old woman hither and yon, got expensive medications for her, as well as warm boots and ham, and promised her money. It was on the verge of happening, thirty-eight people trembled and grumbled, weddings were called off, summer vacations burst, somewhere in the chain a certain Simakov dropped out, bleeding ulcers—doesn’t matter, forget him—the ranks closed, more efforts, the old woman equivocated and resisted, under horrible pressure signed the documents, and just at the moment when somewhere in the cloudy skies a pink angel filled out the order with an air pen, bam! she changed her mind. Just like that—upped and changed it. And just leave her alone.

  The howl of fifteen families shook the earth, the axis shifted, volcanoes erupted, Hurricane Anna wiped out a young under-developed nation, the Himalayas grew even taller and the Marianas Trench deeper, but Galya and Yura remained where they were. And the wolves giggled in the forest. For it was written: if you are meant to chirp, don’t purr. If you are meant to purr, don’t chirp.

  “Should we denounce the old woman?” Galya said.

  “But to whom?” Haggard Yura burned with an evil flame, it was sad to look at him. He figured this and that—no go. Maybe complain to St. Peter, so that he wouldn’t let the lousy woman into Heaven. Yura picked up a lot of rocks in the quarry and went one night to her house to break her windows, but came back with the news that they were broken—they weren’t the only ones with the bright idea.

  Then they cooled off, of course.

  Now she lay and thought about Filin: how he folded his fingers into a tent, smiled, dangled his foot, how he raised his eyes to the ceiling when he talked. . . . There was so much she had to tell him. . . . Bright light, bright flowers, the bright silvery beard with the black spot around his mouth. Of course, Alisa was no match for him, and she couldn’t appreciate the wonderland. Nor did she deserve it. He needed someone understanding. . . .

  “Blah-blah-blah,” said Yura in his sleep.

  . . . Yes, someone understanding and sensitive . . . to steam his raspberry robe . . . run his bath . . . do something with his slippers . . .

  They’d divide their property like this: Yura could have the apartment, the dog, and the furniture. Galya would take their daughter, some of the linens, the iron, and the washing machine. The toaster. The mirror from the hallway. Mother’s good forks. The African violet. That’s all, probably.

  No, that’s nonsense. How could you understand Galya’s life, Galya’s third-rate existence, the humiliation, the jabs at her soul? How can you describe it? How can you describe—well, how about the time Galya managed to get—through chicanery, bribery, and the necessary phone calls—a ticket to the Bolshoi—in the orchestra!—just one lousy ticket (of course, Yura wasn’t interested in culture), how she bathed, steamed, and curled herself, preparing for the big event, how she left the house on tiptoe, cherishing the golden atmosphere of the lofty and beautiful in herself—but it was autumn, it started to pour, and she couldn’t get a taxi, and Galya rushed around in the slush, damning the skies, fate, the city builders, and when she finally got to the theater she realized she had left her good shoes at home and her boots were full of mud and the soles had red cakes with clumps of grass sticking out of them—a vulgar bumpkin, a country creep, a local yokel. Even the hem of her dress was messed up.

  So Galya—and what was so bad about that?—simply crept to the ladies’ room quietly and washed her boots with her hankie and rinsed off the shameful hem. And then this toad—not an employee, but an art lover—like lilac jelly, her cameos jiggling, started in on her: How dare you! At the Bolshoi, scraping your filthy feet, you’re not in a bathhouse, you know! And she went on and on and people started to stare and whisper and, not knowing what was going on, to give her dirty looks.

  And it was ruined for her, spoiled and lost, and Galya wasn’t up to high drama, and the small swans wasted their famous dance at a slow canter. Angry tears boiling, tormented by un-avenged injury, Galya flattened the dancers with her gaze without any pleasure, making out through her binoculars their yellowish working faces, their laboring neck muscles, and severely, ruthlessly told herself that they weren’t swans at all but union members, that their lives were like everyone else’s—ingrown toenails, unfaithful husbands—and that as soon as they finished their dance, they would pull on warm knit pants and head for home, for home: in icy Zyuzino, and puddly Korovino, and even to that horrible city limits road where Galya howled silently at night, into that impenetrable misery where you can only run and croak inhumanly. And let’s see that white insouciant fluttery one, that one, take Galya’s daily path, let her fall belly-deep into the tortuous mud, in the viscous Precambrian of the outskirts, and let’s see her twist and clamber out—now, that would be some fouetté.

  How can you describe that?

  In March he didn’t call, and in April he didn’t call, and the summer passed in vain, and Galya was going crazy: What was wrong? Was he sick of them? Were they unworthy? She was tired of dreaming, of waiting for the phone call, she began to forget the beloved features: now she pictured him as a giant, frightening black gaze, huge hands with sparkling rings, dry, oriental beard with a metallic rustle.

  And she didn’t recognize him right away when he passed her in the subway—small, hurrying, careworn—he went around her without noticing and just walked on, and it was too late to hail him.

  He walked like an ordinary man; his small feet, accustomed to polished parquet, spoiled by velvet slippers, stepped on the spittle-covered bathroom tiles of the passageway, ran up t
he ordinary steps; small fists rummaged in pockets, located a handkerchief, hit his nose—boof, boof!—and back in the pocket; then he shook himself like a dog, adjusted his scarf, and went on, under the archway with faded gold mosaics, past the statue of a partisan patriarch, confusedly spreading his bronze hand with an annoying error in the position of his fingers.

  He walked through the crowd, and the crowd, thickening and thinning, rustled, pushed against him—a cheerful over-weight woman, an amber Hindu in snow-white Muslim underpants, a soldier with boils, old mountain women in galoshes, stunned by the bustle.

  He walked without looking back, he had no time for Galya, her greedy eyes, extended neck—he leaped up like a schoolboy and onto the escalator—and he was gone, vanished, no more, only the warm rubber wind from an approaching train, the hiss and bang of the doors, and the speech of the crowd like the speech of many waters.

  And that same evening Allochka called and informed her indignantly that she and Filin went to get married and there, filling out the forms, she discovered he was a pretender, that he was subletting the apartment in the high-rise from some polar explorer, and all those things probably belong to the explorer and not to him, and that he was actually registered as living in the town of Domodedovo. And that she proudly threw the papers at him and left, not because of Domodedovo, of course, but because her pride wouldn’t let her marry a man who had lied to her even this much. And they should know whom they’re dealing with.