The summers and winters slipped by and melted, dissolving and fading, harvests of rainbows hung over distant houses, young greedy blizzards marauded from the northern forests, moving time forward, and the day came when the woman with big feet abandoned Peters, quietly shutting the door and leaving to buy soap and stir pots for another. Then Peters carefully opened his eyes and woke up.
The clock was ticking, fruit compote floated in a glass pitcher, and his slippers had grown cold overnight. Peters felt himself, counted his fingers and hairs. Regret flickered and passed. His body still remembered the quiet of past years, the heavy sleep of the calendar, but in the depths of his spiritual flesh something long forgotten, young and trusting, was stirring, sitting up, shaking itself, and smiling.
Old Peters pushed the window frame—the blue glass rang, a thousand yellow birds flew up, and the naked golden spring cried, laughing: catch me, catch me! New children played in the puddles with their buckets. And wanting nothing, regretting nothing, Peters smiled gratefully at life—running past, indifferent, ungrateful, treacherous, mocking, meaningless, alien—marvelous, marvelous, marvelous.
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis
SLEEPWALKER IN A FOG
HAVING made it halfway through his earthly life, Denisov grew pensive. He started thinking about life, about its meaning, about the fleetingness of his half-spent existence, about his nighttime fears, about the vermin of the earth, about the beautiful Lora and several other women, about the fact that summers were humid nowadays, and about distant countries, in whose existence, truth be told, he found it hard to believe.
Australia aroused special doubt. He was prepared to believe in New Guinea, in the squeaky snap of its fleshy greenery, in the muggy swamps and black crocodiles: a strange place, but, all right. He conceded the existence of the tiny, colorful Philippines, he was ready to grant the light blue stopper of Antarctica—it hung right over his head, threatening to dislodge and shower him with stinging iceberg chips. Stretching out on a sofa with stiff, antediluvian bolsters and worn-out springs, smoking, Denisov glanced at the map of the hemispheres and disapproved of the continents’ placement. The top part’s not bad, reasonable enough: Landmasses here, water there, it’ll do. Another couple of seas in Siberia wouldn’t hurt. Africa could be lower. India’s all right. But down below everything’s badly laid out: the continents narrow down to nothing, islands are strewn about with no rhyme or reason, there are all kinds of troughs and trenches. . . . And Australia is obviously neither here nor there: anyone can see that logically there should be water in its place, but just look what you’ve got! Denisov blew smoke at Australia and scanned the water-stained ceiling: on the floor above him lived a seafaring captain, as white, gold, and magnificent as a dream, as ephemeral as smoke, as unreal as the dark blue southern seas. Once or twice a year he materialized, showed up at home, took a bath, and drenched Denisov’s apartment along with everything in it, though there wasn’t anything in it other than the sofa and Denisov. Well, a refrigerator stood in the kitchen. A tactful man, Denisov couldn’t bring himself to ask: What’s the matter?—especially since no later than the morning following the cataclysm the splendid captain would ring the doorbell, hand him an envelope with a couple of hundred rubles—for repairs—and depart with a firm stride. He was off on a new voyage.
Denisov reflected on Australia irritatedly; on his fiancée, Lora, distractedly. Everything had already been pretty much decided; sooner or later he intended to become her fourth husband, not because she lit up the world, as the saying goes, but because with her no light was needed. In the light she talked incessantly, saying whatever came into her head.
“An awful lot of women,” said Lora, “dream of having a tail. Think about it yourself. First of all, wouldn’t it be pretty—a thick fluffy tail, it could be striped, black and white, for example—that would look good on me—and you know, on Pushkin Square I saw a little fur coat that would have been just the thing for that kind of tail. Short, with wide sleeves, and a shawl collar. It would go with a black skirt like the one that Katerina Ivanna made for Ruzanna, but Ruzanna wants to sell, so just imagine—if you had a tail, you could get by in a coat without a collar. Wrap it around your neck—and you’re all warm. Then, say you’re going to the theater. A simple open dress, and over it—your own fur. Fabulous! Second, it would be convenient. In the metro you could hold on to the straps with it; if it’s too hot—you’ve got a fan; and if someone gets fresh—slap him with your tail! Wouldn’t you like me to have a tail? . . . What do you mean, you don’t care?”
“Ah, my beauty, I should have your worries,” Denisov said morosely.
But Denisov knew that he himself was no prize—with his smoke-stale jacket, his ponderous thoughts, his nocturnal heart palpitations, his predawn fear of dying and being forgotten, being erased from human memory, vanishing without a trace in the air.
Half of his earthly life was behind him, ahead lay the second half, the bad half. At this rate Denisov would just whir over the earth and depart, and no one would have reason to remember him! Petrovs and Ivanovs die every day, their simple names are carved in marble. Why couldn’t Denisov linger on some memorial plaque, why couldn’t his profile grace the neighborhood of Orekhovo-Borisovo? “In this house I dwell. . . .” Now he was going to marry Lora and die—she wouldn’t have it in her to make an appeal to the place where these things are decided, whether or not to immortalize. . . . “Comrades, immortalize my fourth husband, okay? Comrades, pleeease.” “Ho-ho-ho . . .” Who was he anyway, in point of fact? He hadn’t composed anything, or sung anything, or shot anyone. He hadn’t discovered anything new and named it after himself. And for that matter, everything had already been discovered, enumerated, denominated; everything alive and dead, from cockroaches to comets, from cheese mold to the spiral arms of abstruse nebulae. Take some old virus—swill, worthless rubbish, couldn’t make a chicken sneeze, but no, it’s already been grabbed, named, and adopted by a couple of your scholarly Germans—just have a look at today’s paper. If you think about it—how do they share it? They probably found the useless bit of scum in some un-washed glass and fainted from happiness—then the shoving and shouting started: “Mine!” “No, mine!” They smashed eyeglasses, ripped suspenders, gave each other a thrashing, puffed and panted, then sat down with the glass on the sofa and embraced: “Hey, pal, let’s go fifty-fifty!” “All right, what can I do with you? . . .”
People assert themselves, sink their hooks in, refuse to go—it’s only natural! Take the recording of a concert, for example. A hush falls over the hall, the piano thunders, the keys flash like lozenges gone berserk, lickety-split, hand over fist, wilder and wilder; the sweet tornado swirls, the heart can’t stand it, it’ll pop right out, it quivers on the last strand, and suddenly: ahem. Ahe he kherr hem. Khu khu khu. Someone coughed. A real solid, throaty cough. And that’s that. The concert is branded from birth with a juicy, influenza stamp, multiplied on millions of black suns, dispersed in all possible directions. The heavenly bodies will burn out, the earth will become crusted in ice, and the planet will move along inscrutable stellar paths like a frozen lump for all time, but that smart aleck’s cough won’t be erased, it won’t disappear, it will be forever inscribed on the diamond tablets of immortal music—after all, music is immortal, isn’t it?—like a rusty nail hammered into eternity; the resourceful fellow asserted himself, scribbled his name in oil paint on the cupola, splashed sulfuric acid on the divine features.
Hmmm.
Denisov had tried inventing things—nothing got invented. He had tried writing poems—they wouldn’t be written. He started a treatise on the impossibility of Australia’s existence: He made himself a pot of strong coffee and sat at the table all night. He worked well, with élan, but in the morning he reread what he had written, tore it up, cried without shedding tears, and went to sleep in his socks. It was soon after this that he met Lora and was nourished, listened to, and comforted many a time, both at his place in Orekhovo-Borisovo, wh
ere the captain of course drenched them in a golden rain, draining his Kingston valves again, as well as in her messy little apartment, where something rustled in the hallway all night.
“What is that,” asked Denisov, alarmed, “not mice?”
“No, no, go to sleep, Denisov, it’s something else. I’ll tell you later. Sleep!”
What was there to do? He slept, dreamt nasty dreams, woke up, thought over what he’d dreamt, and dozed off again, and in the morning he drank coffee in the kitchen with the sweet-smelling Lora and her widower father, a retired zoologist, a most gentle old man, blue-eyed, a bit on the strange side—but who isn’t a bit strange? Papa’s beard was whiter than salt, his eyes clearer than spring; he was quiet, quick to shed tears of joy, a lover of caramels, raisins, rolls with jam; he bore no resemblance to the noisy, excitable Lora, all gold and black. “You know, Denisov, my papa’s wonderful, a real dove of peace, but I’ve got problems with him, I’ll tell you about it later. He’s so sensitive, intelligent, knowing, he could go on working and working, but he’s retired—some ill-wishers schemed against him. He gave a paper in his institute on the kinship of birds and reptiles or crocodiles or something—you know what I mean, right?—the ones that run and bite. But the research director’s last name is Bird, so he took it personally. These zoologists are always on the lookout for ideological rot, because they haven’t decided yet whether man is actually a monkey or if it just seems that way. So they sacked poor Papa, bless his heart, now he stays at home, cries, eats, and popularizes. He writes those, you know, notes of a phenologist, for magazines, well, you know what I mean. On the seasons, on toads, why the cock crows, and what it is that makes elephants so cute. He writes really well, none of that wishy-washy puffery, but like an educated person, plus he’s lyrical. Poppykins, I tell him, you’re my Turgenev—and he cries. Love him, Denisov, he deserves it.”
His head lowered, sad and humble, Lora’s snow-white papa listened to her monologues, dabbed the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief, and shuffled off to his study with little steps. “Shhhhh,” whispered Lora, “quiet now . . . he’s gone to popularize.” The study is silent, desolate, the shelves are cracking, the encyclopedias, reference books, yellowed journals, and packets with reprints of someone’s articles are all gathering dust—everything is unneeded, disintegrating, grown cold. In a corner of the necropolis, like a solitary grave, stands Papa’s desk, a pile of papers, copies of a children’s magazine: Papa writes for children; Papa squeezes his many years of knowledge into the undeveloped heads of Young Pioneers; Papa adapts, squats, gets down on all fours; noise, exclamations, sobs, and the crackle of ripping paper issue from the study. Lora sweeps up the scraps, it’s all right, he’ll calm down now, now everything will work out. Papa’s on the wolf today, he’s tackling the wolf, he’s bending him, breaking, squeezing him into the proper framework. Denisov looked distractedly at the swept-up scraps:
“The Wolf. Canis lupus. Diet.”
“The wolf’s diet is varied.”
“The wolf has a varied diet: rodents, domesticated livestock.”
“Varied is the diet of the gray one: here you have both rodents and domesticated livestock.”
“How varied is the diet of the wolfling cub—our little gray dumpling tub: you’ll find both bitty baby rabbits and curly little lambs. . . .”
Don’t worry, don’t worry, Papa, my darling, write on; everything will pass. Everything will be fine. Denisov is the one destroyed by doubts, worm-eaten thoughts, cast-iron dreams. Denisov is the one who suffers, as if from heartburn, who kisses Lora on the top of the head, rides home, collapses on the sofa under the map of the hemispheres, his socks toward Tierra del Fuego, his head beneath the Philippines. It’s Denisov who sets an ashtray on his chest and envelops the cold mountains of Antarctica in smoke—after all, someone is sitting there right now, digging in the snow in the mighty name of science; here’s some smoke for you, guys—warm yourselves up; it’s Denisov who denies the existence of Australia, nature’s mistake, who feebly dreams of the captain—time for another drenching, the money’s run out—and whose thoughts again turn to fame, memory, immortality. . . .
He had a dream. He bought some bread, it seems—the usual: one loaf, round, and a dozen bagels. And he’s taking it somewhere. He’s in some sort of house. Maybe an office building—there are hallways, staircases. Suddenly three people, a man, a woman, and an old man, who had just been talking with him calmly—one was explaining something, one was giving him advice about how to get somewhere—saw the bread and sort of jerked, as if they were about to attack him but immediately refrained. And the woman says: “Excuse me, is that bread you have there?” “Yes, I bought it—” “Won’t you give it to us?” He looks and suddenly sees: Why, they’re siege victims. They’re hungry. Their eyes are very strange. And he immediately understands: Aha, they’re victims of the siege of Leningrad, that means I’m one too. That means there’s nothing to eat. Greed instantly overwhelms him. Only a minute ago bread was a trifle, nothing special, he bought it just like he always does, and now suddenly he begrudges it. And he says: “We-ell, I don’t know. I need it myself. I don’t know. I don’t know.” They say nothing and look him straight in the eyes. The woman is trembling. Then he takes one bagel, the one with the fewest poppy seeds, breaks it into pieces, and hands it out; but he takes one piece for himself all the same, he holds it back. He crooks his hand strangely—in real life you couldn’t bend it that way—and keeps the piece of bagel. He doesn’t know why, well, simply . . . so as not to give everything away at once. . . . And he leaves posthaste, leaves these people with their outstretched hands, and suddenly he’s back at home and he understands: What the devil kind of siege? There is no siege. We’re living in Moscow anyway, seven hundred kilometers away—what is this all of a sudden? The refrigerator is full, and I’m full, and out the window people are walking around contented, smiling. . . . And he is instantly ashamed, and feels an unpleasant queasiness around his heart, and that plump loaf oppresses him, and the remaining bagels are like the links of a broken chain, and he thinks: So there, I shouldn’t have been so greedy! Why was I? What a swine . . . And he rushes back: Where are they, those hungry people? But they aren’t anywhere to be found, that’s it, too late, my friend, you blew it, go look your heart out, all the doors are locked, time has opened and slammed shut, go on then, live, live, you’re allowed! But let me in! . . . Open up! It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to be horrified, I wasn’t prepared. But I simply wasn’t prepared! He knocks at a door, bangs on it with his foot, kicks it with his heel. The door opens wide and there is a cafeteria, a café of some sort; tranquil diners are coming out, wiping well-fed mouths, macaroni and meat patties lie picked apart on the plates. . . . Those three passed by like shades lost in time; they dissolved, disintegrated, they’re gone, gone, and will never come back. The branches of a naked tree sway, reflected in the water, there’s a low sky, the burning stripe of the sunset, farewell.
Farewell! And he surfaces on his bed, on the sofa, he’s surfaced, the sheets are all tangled around his legs, he doesn’t understand anything. What nonsense, really, what is all this? If he would just fall asleep again immediately, everything would pass and by morning it would be forgotten, erased, like words written on sand, on the sea’s sonorous shore—but no, unsettled by what he had seen, he got up for some reason, went to the kitchen, and, staring senselessly straight ahead, ate a meat-patty sandwich.
A dark July dawn was just breaking, the birds weren’t even singing yet, no one was walking on the street—just the right sort of time for shades, visions, succubi, and phantoms.
How did they put it? “Give it to us”—was that it? The more he thought about them, the clearer the details became. As alive as you and me, honestly. No, worse than alive. The old man’s neck, for example, materialized and persisted, stubbornly incarnating itself, a wrinkled, congealed brown neck, as dark as the skin of a smoked salmon. The collar of a whitish, faded blue shirt. And a
bone button, broken in half. The face was indistinct—an old man’s face, that’s all. But the neck, the collar, and the button stayed before his eyes. The woman, metamorphosing, pulsating this way and that, took the shape of a thin, tired blonde. She looked a little like his deceased Aunt Rita.
But the other man was fat.
No, no, they behaved improperly. That woman, how did she ask: “What’ve you got there, bread?” As if it weren’t obvious! Yes, bread! He shouldn’t have carried it in his string bag, but in a plastic bag, or at least wrapped in paper. And what was this: “Give it to us”? Now what kind of thing is that to say? What if he had a family, children? Maybe he has ten children? Maybe he was bringing it to his children, how do they know? So what if he doesn’t have any children, that’s his business, after all. He bought the bread, therefore he needed it. He was walking along minding his own business. And suddenly: “Give it to us!” How’s that for a declaration?
Why did they pester him? Yes, he did begrudge the bread, he did have that reflex, it’s true, but he gave them a bagel, and a flavorful, expensive, rosy bagel, by the way, is better, more valuable than black bread, if you come right down to it. That’s for starters. Second, he immediately came to his senses and rushed back, he wanted to set things right, but everything had moved, changed, warped—what could he do? He looked for them—honestly, clearly, with full awareness of his guilt; he banged on doors, what could he do if they decided not to wait and vanished? They should have stayed put, held on to the railings—there were railings—and waited quietly until he ran back to help them. They just couldn’t be patient for ten seconds, how do you like that? No, not ten, not seconds, everything’s different there, space slips away, and time collapses sideways like a ragged wave, and everything spins, spins like a top: there, one second is huge, slow, and resonant, like an abandoned cathedral, another is tiny, sharp, fast—you strike a match and burn up a thousand millennia; a step to the side—and you’re in another universe. . . .
White Walls Page 19