White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  The view of a serenely existing Australia infuriated him. Take that! He yanked at the map and tore off the fifth continent plus New Zealand. The Philippines cracked in the bargain.

  The ceiling oozed during the night. The captain was back. There’d be some money. Why not write a story about the captain? Who he is and where he comes from. Where he sails. Why he drips. Why does he drip, anyway? Can’t do without water, is that it?

  Maybe his pipes have rusted.

  Or he’s drunk.

  Or maybe he goes into the bathroom, lays his head on the edge of the sink, and cries, cries like Denisov, cries and mourns his meaningless life, the emptiness of the seas, the deceptive beauty of lilac islands, human vice, feminine silliness, mourns the drowned, the perished, the forgotten, the betrayed, the unneeded; tears overflow the soiled ceramic glaze of the sink, pour onto the floor, they’re already up to the ankles, now they’ve risen to the knees, ripples, circles, wind, storm. After all, isn’t there a saying: the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

  Aunt Rita, where are you? In what spaces does your weightless spirit wander, is peace known to you? Do you sweep like a wan breeze across the meadows of the dead, where hollyhocks and asphodels grow, do you howl like a winter storm, pushing your way through the cracks of warm human dwellings, is it you singing in the sounds of the piano, living and dying with the music? Maybe you whimper like a homeless dog, run across the night road like a hurrying hedgehog, curl up under a damp stone like an eyeless worm? You must be in a bad way wherever you are now, otherwise why infiltrate our dreams, reach out your hand, ask for alms—bread, or, perhaps, simply memory? And who are these people you’ve taken up with, you, so pretty, with your fair hair and colored sash? Or are the roads that all of you take so dangerous, the forests where you spend the night so cold and deserted, that you band together, press close to one another, and hold hands as you fly over our lighted houses at night? . . .

  Can it really be that this is what lies in store for me as well: to wander, whimper, pound on doors—remember, remember!. . . The predawn clatter of hooves on cobblestone, the dull thud of an apple in an orchard gone to seed, the splash of a wave in the autumn sea—someone is beseeching, scratching, someone wants to return, but the gates are closed, the locks have rusted, the key has been thrown away, the caretaker has died, and no one has come back.

  No one, do you hear, no one has come back! Do you hear? I’m going to scream!!! Aaaaaaaa! No one! No one! And we are all pulled that way, an invincible force pushes at our backs, our legs slip on the crumbling incline, our hands clutch at clumps of grass, at least give me time to collect myself, to catch my breath. What will remain of us? What will remain of us? Don’t touch me! Lora! Lora! For heaven’s sake, Lora!!!

  . . . And she arose from the dark, from the damp fog, arose and moved toward him, unhurried—clip-clop, slip-slop—in some sort of outrageous, slit-open gold boots, in brazen, wantonly short boots; her thin, orphaned ankles creaked, wobbling in the gold leather, higher up a flamboyant raincoat furled and rustled in the black beads of the night fog, buckles clinked and clanked, higher still her smile played, the lunar rainbows of streetlamps set her rosy teeth ablaze; above the smile hung her heavy eyes, and all this rustling, all this effrontery and finery, triumph and abomination, the entire living, swirling maelstrom was topped off with a tragic man’s hat. Lord almighty, Father in heaven, it was with her that he would share his bed, his table, and his dreams. What dreams? It doesn’t matter. All sorts. A beautiful woman, a garrulous woman, a head full of rubbish, but a beautiful woman.

  “Well, hello there, Denisov, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “What are those puttees you’re wearing, my lovely?” Denisov asked disapprovingly as Lora kissed him.

  She was surprised and looked down at her boots, at their dead, gold cuffs, rolled inside out like the pale flesh of poisonous mushrooms. What’s that supposed to mean? What’s with him? She’d been wearing them for a whole year already, had he forgotten? Of course, it was definitely time to buy new ones, but she wasn’t up to it at the moment, because while he had been off keeping himself in seclusion, she’d had a horrific misfortune. She got out to the theater only once in a blue moon, and she wanted to take a little break from Papa and live like a human being, so she sent Papa to the country and asked Zoya Trofimovna to keep an eye on him. Zoya Trofimovna couldn’t stand it more than three days—well, no one could, but that’s beside the point—so anyway, while she was cooling out in one of those basement theaters—a very fashionable little theater and very hard to get tickets to—where the whole decor is only matting and thumbtacks, where the ceiling drips, but there’s a lofty spirit, where there’s always a draft on your legs, but as soon as you enter you have this instant catharsis, there’s so much enthusiasm and the tears are so divine that you want to burst. So anyway, while she was hanging out there and lapping it all up, hoodlums cleaned out their apartment. They took everything, literally everything: candlesticks, brassieres, an entire subscription set of Molière, a poisonous pink Filimonovsky clay toy in the shape of a man with a book—it was a gift from one of those village writers, a born genius, they won’t publish him, but he came on foot from the backwoods, he spends the night with kind people and he doesn’t bathe on principle; on principle, because he knows the Fundamental Truth and hates tile with a fierce hatred, he simply turns purple if he sees glazed or brick tile somewhere, he even has a cycle of anti-tile poems—powerful lines with the strength of timber, all full of “Hail!” this and “Hail!” that, and about magical singing zithers, something really profound—so anyway, his present disappeared and so did that Vietnamese bamboo curtain, and whatever they couldn’t carry off they either moved somewhere else or piled up. What kind of people are these, tell me, I just don’t know; naturally, she had reported it to the police, but of course nothing would come of it, because they have such awful bulletin boards there—missing children, women they haven’t been able to find for years—so how could they be expected to rush out and comb Moscow for a bunch of brassieres? It was good that they didn’t throw out Papa’s manuscripts, only scattered them. Anyway, she was terribly depressed about all this, and she was also depressed because she went to a reunion of her former classmates—they graduated from school fifteen years ago—and everyone had changed so much that you simply couldn’t recognize them, it was a nightmare, total strangers. But that’s not the main thing, the main thing is that there were these guys, Makov and Sysoev, they used to sit at a desk in the back row and shoot spitballs, they brought sparrows to school, and on the whole were thick as thieves. So anyway, Makov died in the mountains—and remained there—that was four years ago, and no one knew, just think, a real hero, nothing less, while Sysoev had become fat and happy—he arrived in a black car with a chauffeur and ordered the chauffeur to wait, and the fellow actually slept in the car the whole evening, but when the guys found out that Sysoev was so important and such a big shot, and that Makov was lying somewhere in a crevice under the snow and couldn’t come, and that swine Sysoev was too lazy to walk over on his own two feet and rolled up in an official car just to show off—there was a scuffle and a rumble, and instead of warm embraces and beautiful memories they boycotted Sysoev, as if there were nothing else to talk about! As if it were his fault that Makov had climbed those mountains. And everyone became simply beastly, it was all so sad, and one boy—of course, he’s completely bald now, Kolya Pishchalsky—picked all the crabs out of the salad and threw them right in Sysoev’s face and shouted: Go on, eat them, you’re used to it, but we’re just simple people. And everyone thought that Sysoev would kill him for it, but no, he got terribly embarrassed and tried to be friendly, but everyone gave him the cold shoulder, and he walked around completely flustered, offering antifog headlights to anyone who wanted to buy them. And then he sort of slipped out, and the girls began to feel sorry for him and started screaming at the others: You aren’t human! What did he do t
o you? So everybody left hostile and angry, and nothing came of the evening. So there you have it, Denisov, why are you being so quiet, I’ve missed you. Let’s go to my place, it’s completely ransacked, but I’ve managed to make everything more or less presentable.

  Lora’s gold boots squeaked, her raincoat rustled, her eyes shone from beneath the hat, her eyebrows smelled of roses and rain . . . while at home, in the stale smoky room, under the wet ceiling, squeezed between dislocated layers of time, Aunt Rita and her comrades thrash about; she perished, the sash tore, the perfume spilled, and the fair hair rotted; she didn’t accomplish anything during her short life, only sang in front of the mirror, and now, lifeless, old, hungry, and frightened, she rushes about in the realm of dreams, begging: remember me! . . . Denisov tightened his grip on Lora’s elbow and turned toward her house, driving away the fog: they shouldn’t split up, they should remain together always, united inside one pair of equation brackets, inseparable, indivisible, indissoluble, merged, like Tristan and Isolde, Khor and Kalinych, cigarettes and matches.

  The cups had been stolen, so they drank tea from glasses. Snow-white Papa, cozy, like a Siberian tomcat, ate doughnuts, shutting his eyes in contentment. We, too, are like those three—the old man, the woman, the fat man—thought Denisov; we, too, have banded together high above the city; seen from the outside, what unites us? A little family, we need each other, we’re weak and confused, robbed by fate: he’s out of work, she’s out of her mind, I’m out of a future. Perhaps we should huddle even closer, hold hands—if one of us trips, the other two will hold him up—eat doughnuts, and not strive for anything, lock ourselves away from people, live without raising our heads, not expecting fame . . . and at the appointed hour close our eyes a bit tighter, tie up our jaws, cross our hands on our chests . . . and safely dissolve into nonbeing? No, no—not for anything!

  “They took all the curtains, the creeps.” Lora sighed. “What do they need my curtains for anyway?”

  The fog settled, or perhaps it hadn’t risen to the sixteenth floor, that light summer fog. Pure blackness and the jeweled lights of distant dwellings looked into the naked windows, and on the horizon, in the Japanese-lacquer dark, the orange half-circle of the rising moon swelled, looking like a mountaintop that had pushed through, illuminated by fruit-colored morning light. Somewhere in the mountains Lora’s classmate Makov, who had risen higher than everyone and remained there forever, slept an eternal sleep.

  The rose-colored summit grows lighter, the cliffs are dusted with snow, Makov lies there gazing into the firmament; cold and magnificent, pure and free, he won’t decay, won’t grow old, won’t cry, won’t destroy anyone, won’t become disillusioned by anything. He is immortal. Could there be a more enviable fate?

  “Listen,” Denisov said to Lora, impressed, “if those jerks of yours didn’t know anything about this Makov, then maybe his coworkers do? . . . Couldn’t a museum be organized or something? And why not rename your school in his honor? After all, he made it famous.”

  Lora was surprised: what museum, good Lord, Denisov, a museum, why? As a student he was nothing to brag about, he dropped out of college, then he went into the army, did this and that, and in recent years worked as a stoker because he liked to read books. He drove his family crazy, it was awful, I know from Ninka Zaitseva, because her mother-in-law works with Makov’s mother. There’s no way the school can be named after Makov anyway, because it’s already named after A. Kolbasiavichius. And his story isn’t all that straightforward either, because, you see, there were two Kolbasiavichius brothers, twins, one was killed by Lithuanian partisan rebels in ’46, and the second was a rebel himself and died from eating bad mushrooms. And since their initials were the same, and even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart, an extremely ambiguous situation arises. You could say that the school is named after the hero-brother, but at one time local hero-trackers came up with the theory that the hero-brother infiltrated the rebel den and was perfidiously killed by the bandits, who saw through the substitution and fed him poisonous soup, while the bandit-brother realized the error of his ways and honorably went to turn himself in, but was accidentally shot. Do you get it, Denisov? One of them is a hero for sure, but which one hasn’t been established. Our director was just going crazy, she even filed a petition to have the school’s name changed. But there can’t even be any question of naming it after Makov, I mean, he’s not some steelworker, right?

  There you have it, human memory, human gratitude, thought Denisov, and he felt guilty. Who am I? No one. Who is Makov? A forgotten hero. Perhaps fate, shod in gold boots, is giving me a hint. Stop tossing and turning, Denisov—here is your goal in life, Denisov! Extricate this perished youth from nonbeing, save him from oblivion; if they laugh at you—be patient, if they persecute you—stand firm, if they humiliate you—suffer for your idea. Don’t betray the forgotten, the forgotten are knocking at our dreams, begging for alms, howling in the night.

  Later, as Denisov was falling asleep in the pillaged apartment high above Moscow, and Lora was falling asleep next to him, her dark hair redolent of roses, the blue moon climbed in the sky, deep shadows fell, something creaked in the depths of the apartment, rustled in the foyer, thumped beyond the door, and softly, evenly, slowly—click-clack—moved along the corridor, skipped to the kitchen, made a door squeak, turned around, and—clack-clack-clack—went back again.

  “Hey, Lora, what is that?”

  “Sleep, Denisov, it’s nothing. Later.”

  “What do you mean, later? Do you hear what’s going on?”

  “Oh Lord,” whispered Lora. “Well, it’s Papa, Papa! I told you I had problems with Papa. He’s a somnambulist—he walks in his sleep. I told you that they kicked him out of work, well, it started right after that. What can I do? I’ve been to see the best doctors! Tengiz Georgievich said: He’ll run around a bit and stop. But Anna Efimovna said: What do you want, it’s his age. And Ivan Kuzmich said: Just thank your lucky stars he’s not out chasing devils. And through Ruzanna I found a psychic at the Ministry of Heavy Industry, but after that session it only got worse: he runs around naked. Go to sleep Denisov, we can’t do anything to help him anyway.”

  But how could he possibly sleep, especially since the zoologist, judging by the sound, had skipped back to the kitchen, and something fell with a crash.

  “Oh, I’m going to go stark-raving mad,” Lora said, growing anxious. “He’ll break the last glasses.”

  Denisov pulled on his pants and Lora ran to her father; shouts could be heard.

  “Now what is he doing? Lord almighty, he’s put on my boots! Papa, I’ve told you a thousand times. . . . Papa, for heaven’s sake, wake up!”

  “Warm-blooded, ha-ha!” shouted the old man, sobbing. “They call themselves warm-blooded. Mere protozoa, I say. Get your pseudopods out of here!”

  “Denisov, grab him from the side! Papochka, Papochka, calm down! I’ll get some valerian. . . . His hands, hold his hands!”

  “Let me go! There they are! I see them!” The sleepwalker broke away, and somehow he mustered incredible strength. His mustache and beard seemed like wintry, woolly things on his naked body.

  “Papa, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Vasily Vasilevich!”

  Night flew over the world, in the distant dark the ocean seethed, distraught Australians looked around, distressed by the disappearance of their continent, the captain drenched Denisov’s smoke-filled lair with bitter tears, Rykushin, famished with fame, ate cold leftovers straight out of the pot, Ruzanna slept facing east, Makov slept facing nowhere. Each was occupied with his own affairs, and who cared that in the middle of the city, many stories up, in the moon’s mother-of-pearl light, real live people were in the throes of struggling, stamping, shouting, and suffering: Lora in her transparent nightshirt—a sight that even tsars would not be loath to gaze upon—the zoologist in gold boots, and Denisov, tormented by visions and doubts.

  •

  . . . The countryside around this clu
ster of dachas was marvelous—oaks everywhere and under the oaks, lawns, and on the lawns people playing volleyball in the reddish evening light. The ball smacked resonantly, a slow wind passed through the oaks, and the oaks slowly answered the wind. And Makov’s dacha was also marvelous—old, gray, with little towers. Amid the flower beds, under the damp evening-time wild cherry tree, his four sisters, mother, stepfather, and aunt sat at a round table drinking tea with raspberries and laughing. The aunt held an infant in her arms, and he waved a plastic parrot; to the side a harmless dog lay endearingly; and some kind of bird walked unhurriedly about its business along the path, not troubling, even out of courtesy, to become alarmed and flutter off at the sight of Denisov. Denisov was a little disappointed by the idyllic scene. It would have been pointless, of course, to expect that the house and garden would be draped in mourning banners, that everyone would walk on tiptoe, that the mother, black with grief, would be lying motionless on the bed, unable to take her eyes off her son’s ice axe, and that from time to time first one, then another member of the family would clutch a crumpled handkerchief and bite it to stifle the sobs—but all the same, he had expected something sad. But they had forgotten, they had all forgotten! Then again, who was he to talk, arriving with a bouquet, as if to congratulate them? . . . They turned to Denisov with perplexed, frightened smiles, looked at the bunch of carnations in his hand, crimson like a sunset before foul weather, like clotted, bloody scabs, like memento mori. The infant, the most sensitive, having not yet forgotten that frightening darkness from which he had recently been called, immediately guessed who had sent Denisov; he kicked and screamed, wanted to warn them, but didn’t know the words.

  No, there was nothing sad to be seen, the only sad thing was that Makov wasn’t here: he wasn’t playing volleyball under the slow oaks, wasn’t drinking tea under the wild cherry tree, he wasn’t shooing away unseasonably late mosquitoes. Denisov, having firmly resolved to suffer in the name of the deceased, overcame the awkwardness, presented the flowers, straightened his mourning tie, sat down at the table, and explained himself. He was the envoy of the forgotten. Such was his mission. He wanted to know everything about their son. Perhaps he would write his biography. A museum, but if that wasn’t feasible, then he could at least arrange a corner of a museum. Display cases. His childhood things. His hobbies. Maybe he collected butterflies, beetles? Tea? Yes, yes, with sugar, thank you, two spoonfuls. He’d have to get in touch with glaciologists. It’s possible that Makov’s climb was in some way important for science. Immortalization of his memory. Annual Makovian readings. Let us dare to dream: Makov Peak—why not? The Makov Foundation with voluntary donations. The possibilities! . . .