White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  So that was it. . . . And they had associated with him. Why he was no better than they, he was just like them, he was simply pretending, mimicking, that pathetic midget, that clown in a shah’s robe.

  Even on the landing she could smell the boiled fish. Galya rang the bell, Filin opened the door and was astonished. He was alone and looked terrible, worse than Julie. Tell him everything. Why stand on ceremony? He was alone and was brazenly eating cod and listening to Brahms, and he had placed a vase with white carnations on the table in front of him.

  “Galochka, what a surprise. You haven’t forgotten me. . . . Please, have some perch Orly, it’s fresh.” Filin offered the cod.

  “I know everything,” Galya said and sat down, as is, in her coat. “Alisa told me everything.”

  “Yes, Alisa, Alisa, what a treacherous woman. Well, how about the fish?”

  “No, thank you. And I know about Domodedovo. And about the polar explorer.”

  “Yes, a horrible story,” Filin said sadly. “The man spent three years in the Antarctic and he’d still be there—it’s romantic—and for such a thing to happen to him. But Dr. Ilizarov will be able to help, I’m sure of it. They do that here.”

  “Do what?” Galya was bewildered.

  “Ears. Don’t you know? My explorer froze off his ears. He’s a Siberian, expansive and generous, they were having an International Women’s Day party with some Norwegians, and one Norwegian liked his fur cap with ear flaps, and so he traded with him. For a cap. It was eighty below outside and seventy degrees indoors. That’s a hundred-fifty-degree difference, can you imagine? Someone called his name from the street: ‘Petya!’ he stuck out his head, and his ears—wham!—just fell off. Of course, there was general panic, they hauled him over the coals, stuck his ears in a box, and flew him immediately to Kurgan, to Dr. Ilizarov. So here’s what . . . I’m leaving.”

  Galya sought words in vain. Something painful.

  “Really,” sighed Filin. “It’s autumn. It’s sad. Everyone’s abandoned me. Alisa abandoned me. . . . Matvei Matveich hasn’t shown his nose. . . . Maybe he’s dead? You’re the only one, Galochka. . . . You’re the only one who could, if you wanted to. But now I’ll be closer to you. I’ll be closer now. Have some perch. Einmal in der Woche, Fisch, which means, fish once a week. Who said that? Well, which famous person said that?”

  “Goethe?” Galya muttered, softening against her will.

  “Close. Close, but not quite.” Filin was animated and younger. “We’re forgetting our history of literature, tsk-tsk-tsk. . . . I’ll give you a hint: when Goethe—you were right there—was an old man, he fell in love with the young and charming Ulrike. He was foolish enough to offer his hand and was cruelly refused. From the doorway. Rather, from the window. The beauty stuck her head out the window and berated the Olympian—well, you know all that, you have to know. You’re old, and so on. A real Faust. You should eat more fish—it has phosphorus to make your brain work. Einmal in der Woche, Fisch. And she slammed the window.”

  “No!” Galya said. “But why . . . I’ve read . . .”

  “We’ve all read something, my dear,” Filin said, blooming. “I’m giving you the bare facts.” He sat more comfortably and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “So the old man wanders home, shattered. As they say, farewell, Antonina Petrovna, my unsung song. . . . He was stooped, the star on his neck went jingle jangle, jingle jangle. . . . It’s evening, dinner time. They serve game with peas. He loved game, I hope you’re not going to argue with that? The candles were lit, silverware on the table, you know, the German kind with knobs, and the aroma. . . . So, the children were there, and the grandchildren there. And in the corner, his secretary, Eckerman, settled in, writing. Goethe picked on a wing and tossed it aside. He couldn’t eat it. Nor the peas. The grandchildren say, Gramps, what’s the matter? He got up, threw his chair down, and said bitterly: once a week, she says, eat fish. He burst into tears and left. The Germans are sentimental. Eckerman, of course, put it all down. If you haven’t had a chance, read Conversations with Goethe. An edifying book. By the way, they used to exhibit that game bird—absolutely petrified by then—in a museum in Weimar, until 1932.”

  “What did they do with the peas?” Galya asked furiously.

  “Fed them to the cat.”

  “Since when do cats eat vegetables?”

  “Just try not eating them with the Germans. They have discipline.”

  “What, did Eckerman write about the cat too?”

  “Yes, it’s in the notes. Depends on the edition, of course.”

  Galya got up, left, went downstairs and outside. Farewell, pink palace, farewell, my dream. Go fly in all four directions, Filin! We stood with arms extended—to whom? What did you give us? Your tree of golden fruit has withered and your words are just fireworks in the night, a brief sprint of colored wind, the hysteria of fiery roses in the darkness above our hair.

  It was growing dark. The autumn wind played with bits of paper, scooping them out of the rubbish bins. She took one last look inside the store that gnawed at the foot of the palace like a transparent worm. She stood at the cheerless counters—beef bones, jars of “Dawn” brand vegetable puree. So then, let’s rub the tears across our cheeks, put out the candles with our spit: our god is dead, and his temple is empty. Farewell!

  And now—home. The road is long. Ahead—is a new winter, new hopes, new songs. Well, then, let’s sing to the outskirts of town, sing the praises of the rain, of buildings gone gray, long evenings on the threshold of darkness. Let’s sing the empty lots, the brown grasses, the earth’s cold layers under an apprehensive foot, let’s sing the slow autumn dawn, the barking of a dog amid the aspen trees, fragile golden webs, and the first ice, the first bluish ice forming in the deep print of another’s footstep.

  Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

  PETERS

  EVEN AS a child, Peters had flat feet and a woman’s broad belly. His late grandmother, who loved him as he was, taught him good manners—chew every little bit thoroughly, tuck your napkin under your chin, and be quiet when adults are talking. So his grandmother’s friends all liked him. When she took him visiting with her, he could safely be allowed to touch an expensive book with illustrations—he wouldn’t tear it—and at the table he never pulled the fringe from the tablecloth or crumbled his cookies—a wonderful boy. They liked the way he entered, too, tugging down his jacket in a dignified manner, adjusting his bow tie or lace jabot, as yellowed as his grandmother’s cheeks; and clicking the heels of his flat feet, he would introduce himself to the old ladies using the old Russian “s” (a contraction for “sir”) at the end of his name. “Peter-s!” He noticed that amused and touched them.

  “Ah, Petya, child! So you call him Peter, do you?”

  “Yes . . . well . . . we’re studying German now,” his grandmother would say casually. And reflected in dull mirrors, Peters walked in measured tread down the hallway, past old trunks, past old smells, into rooms where rag dolls sat in corners, where green cheese dreamt under a green cover on the table and homemade cookies gave off a vanilla aroma. While the hostess put out the small silver spoons, corroded on one side, Peters wandered around the room, examining the dolls on the chest, the portrait of the severe, offended old man with a mustache like a long spoke, the vignettes on the wallpaper, or approached the window and looked through the thickets of aloe out into the sunny cold air where blue pigeons flew and rosy-cheeked children sledded down tracked hills. He wasn’t allowed to go outside.

  The stupid nickname Peters stuck the rest of his life.

  Peters’s mother, Grandmother’s daughter, ran off to warmer climes with a scoundrel, his father spent time with loose women and took no interest in his son. Listening to the grownups’ conversation, Peters pictured the scoundrel as a Negro under a banana palm and Father’s women as light blue and airy, floating around untethered like spring clouds; but, well brought up by his grandmother, he said nothing. Besides a grandmother, he also had a grandfather who us
ed to lie quietly in the corner in an armchair, saying nothing and watching Peters with shining glassy eyes, then they laid him out on the dining room table, kept him there for two days, and then took him away. They had rice porridge that day.

  Grandmother promised Peters that if he behaved, he would live marvelously when he grew up. Peters said nothing. In the evenings, in bed with his fuzzy bunny, he described his future life to it—how he would go out whenever he felt like it, play with all the kids, how Mama and the scoundrel would come visit and bring him sweet fruits, how Father’s loose women would float around with him, as if in a dream. The bunny believed him.

  His grandmother gave Peters slapdash German lessons. They played the very old game, Black Peter, drawing cards from each other’s hand and matching up pairs—goose and gander, rooster and hen, dogs with haughty faces. Only the cat, Black Peter, had no pair, he was always alone—grim and withdrawn—and whoever got stuck with Black Peter at the end of the game lost and just sat there like a fool.

  They also had color postcards with captions: Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe; there were transparent inserts without feathers but with a window: if you look into the window, you see someone distant, tiny, on horseback. They also sang “O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum!” All that was German lessons.

  When Peters turned six, his grandmother took him to a New Year’s party. The children had been checked out: not infectious. Peters walked as fast as he could in the snow, his grandmother barely kept up. His throat was snugly wrapped in a white scarf, his eyes shone in the dark like a cat’s. He was in a hurry to make friends. The marvelous life was beginning. The big hot apartment smelled of pine, toys and stars sparkled, other people’s mothers bustled with pies and soft pretzels, quick, agile children squealed and raced around. Peters stopped in the middle of the room and waited for them to make friends. “Catch us, tubby!” they shouted. Peters ran blindly and then stopped. They smashed into him, he fell and stood up, like a weighted doll. Hard adult hands moved him toward the wall. He stood there until tea was served.

  At tea all the children behaved badly except Peters. He ate his portion, wiped his mouth, and awaited events, but there were no events. Only one girl, as black as a beetle, asked him if he had any warts and showed him hers.

  Peters immediately fell in love with the girl with the warts and dogged her every step. He asked her to sit on the couch with him and that no one else come near her. But he couldn’t wiggle his ears or roll his tongue into a tube, which she requested, and she quickly grew bored and abandoned him. Then he didn’t know what to do. Then he wanted to spin in place and shout loudly, and he spun and shouted, and then his grandmother was dragging him home through blue snow banks saying indignantly that she simply didn’t recognize him, that he was all sweaty and that they would no longer visit children. And in fact, they were never there again.

  Until he was fifteen, Peters held his grandmother’s hand when they walked on the street. First she supported him and then vice versa. At home they played dominoes and solitaire. Peters used a jigsaw. He wasn’t a good student. Before dying, his grandmother got Peters into a library school and willed him to protect his throat and wash his hands thoroughly.

  The day she was buried the ice broke on the Neva River.

  •

  In the library where Peters worked, the women were not attractive. And he liked attractive women. But what could he offer such a woman, if he ever met one? A pink belly and tiny eyes? If only he were a brilliant conversationalist, if only he knew German well; but no, all he remembered from his childhood was Karlsruhe. But in his imagination he has an affair with a gorgeous woman. While she does this and that, he reads Schiller out loud to her. In the original. Or Hölderlin. She doesn’t understand a word, naturally, nor could she, but that’s not important; what’s important is how he reads—with inspiration, with a musical ripple in his voice. . . . Holding the book close to his nearsighted eyes . . . No, no, of course he’ll get contact lenses. Though they say they pinch. So, here he is reading. “Drop the book,” she says. Kisses, tears, and the dawn, the dawn . . . And the contacts pinch. He’ll blink and squint and poke his fingers in his eyes. . . . She’ll wait a bit and then say, “Just peel those damned bits of glass off, good lord!” And get up and slam the door.

  No. This is better. A sweet, quiet blonde. Her head on his shoulder. He is reading Hölderlin out loud. Maybe Schiller. Dark forests, mermaids . . . He’s reading and reading, his mouth is dried out. She’ll yawn and say, “Good lord, how long am I supposed to listen to this stuff?”

  No, that wouldn’t do, either.

  What if he left out the German? Without the German, it could go something like this: a knockout woman, like a leopard. And he’s like a tiger. Have to have ostrich feathers, a lithe silhouette on the couch. . . . (Have it slipcovered.) The silhouette, then. The cushions fall to the floor. And the dawn, the dawn . . . Maybe I’ll even marry her. Why not? Peters looked at his reflection in the mirror, the fat nose, the eyes rolling with passion, the soft flat feet. And so what? He looked a bit like a polar bear, women ought to like that and be pleasantly frightened. Peters blew at himself in the mirror to cool off. But neither friendships nor affairs happened.

  Peters tried going to dances, stumbling about, panting, and stepping on young ladies’ feet: he would approach a group of laughing and chatting people, clasp his hands behind his back, tilt his head to one side, and listen to the conversation. It was getting dark, August was blowing cool air from the stiff bushes, sprinkling the red dust of the last rays over the black foliage and the park’s paths; lights went on in the stalls and kiosks selling wine and meat, and Peters went past severely, holding on to his wallet, but unable to resist the wave of hunger that engulfed him, bought a half dozen pastries, went off to the side, and in the gathered darkness hurriedly consumed them from the glinting metal plate. When he came out of the darkness, blinking, licking his lips, with white cream on his chin, and mustered his courage, he approached people and introduced himself—blindly, headlong, seeing nothing out of fear, clicking the heels of his flat feet—and women recoiled and men intended to punch him, but took a closer look and changed their minds.

  No one wanted to play with him.

  At home Peters beat egg yolks and sugar for his throat, washed and dried the glass, then set his slippers neatly on the bedside rug, got into bed, stretching his arms out on top of the covers, and lay motionless, staring into the twilit, pulsating ceiling until sleep came for him.

  Sleep came, invited him into its loopholes and corridors, made dates on secret stairways, locked the doors and rebuilt familiar houses, frightening him with trunks and women and bubonic plagues and black diamonds, quickly led him along dark passages, and pushed him into a stuffy room where a man sat at a table twiddling his thumbs, shaggy and laughing mockingly, knowledgeable in many nasty things.

  Peters thrashed in his sheets, begged forgiveness, and forgiven this time, once again plunged to the bottom until morning, confused in the reflections of the crooked mirrors of the magic theater.

  •

  When a new person appeared in the library, dark and perfumed, in a berry-colored dress, Peters grew agitated. He went to the barber and had his colorless hair cut, then swept his apartment an extra time, and switched the chest of drawers and armchair around. Not that he expected Faina to come over right away; but just in case, Peters had to be ready.

  At work there was a New Year’s party, and Peters bustled about, cutting out snowflakes the size of saucers and pasting them on the library windows, hanging pink crepe paper, getting tangled in foil icicles, the small Christmas tree lights were reflected in his rolling eyes, it smelled of pine and garlic, and dry snow came through the open window. He thought: if she has, say, a fiancé, I could come over to him, quietly take him by the hand and ask in a regular, man-to-man way: leave Faina, leave her for me, what’s it to you, you can find someone else for yourself, you know how to do it. But I don’t, my mother ran off with a scoundrel, my father’s floating in
the sky with blue women, Grandmother ate Grandfather with the rice porridge, ate my childhood, my only childhood, and girls with warts don’t want to sit on the couch with me. Come on, give me something, huh?

  The burning candles stood, chest-high in translucent apple light, a promise of goodness and peace, the pink-yellow flame nodded its head, champagne fizzed, Faina sang to guitar accompaniment, Dostoevsky’s picture on the wall averted its eyes; then they told fortunes, opening Pushkin at random. Peters got: “Adele, love my reed.” They laughed at him and asked him to introduce them to Adele; they forgot about it, talking on their own, and he sat quietly in the corner, crunching on cake, figuring out how he would see Faina home. As the party broke up, he ran after her to the coat room, held her fur coat in outstretched arms, watched her change shoes, putting her foot in colored stocking into the cozy fur-lined boot, wrapping a white scarf around her head, and hoisting her bag on her shoulder—everything excited him. She slammed the door, and he saw only her—she waved a mitten, jumped into the trolley, and vanished in the white blizzard. But even that was like a promise.

  Triumphant bells rang in his ears, and his eye saw what had previously been invisible. All roads led to Faina, all winds trumpeted her glory, shouted out her dark name, whirled over the steep slate roofs, over towers and spires, snaked in snowy strands and threw themselves at her feet, and the whole city, all the islands and the water and embankments, statues and gardens, bridges and fences, wrought-iron roses and horses, everything blended into a circle, weaving a rattling winter wreath for his beloved.

  He could never manage to be alone with her and he sought her out on the street, but she always whizzed past him like the wind, a ball, a snowball thrown by a strong arm. And her friend who looked in at the library in the evenings was horrible, impossible, like a toothache—an outgoing journalist, all creaking leather, long-legged, long-haired, full of international jokes about a Russian, a German, and a Pole measuring the fatness of their women and the Russian winning. The journalist wrote an article in the paper, where he lied and said that “it is always very crowded at the stands with books on beet raising” and that “visitors call librarian Faina A. the pilot of the sea of books.” Faina laughed, happy to be in the newspaper, Peters suffered in silence. He kept mustering his strength to at last take her by the hand, lead her to his house, and after a session of passion discuss their future life together.