White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  But Spiridonov, deaf to Lyonechka’s decadent poetry, dreamed his own dreams, and his plans were grandiose: some sort of antennas, amplifiers, coils of wire, radio vacuum tubes, musical light shows. Ha! What light shows; he already planned to wire entire imaginary dance halls and stadiums for sound; he fantasized television images, festivals, cross-country friendship races, the investiture of Olympic medals, the erection of congratulatory statues in the motherland—marble to the neck, bronze to the nipple, a full five stories of granite with sword in hand; he was already razing mountains and excavating tunnels, damming rivers, and redrawing the borders of republics, he was already traveling into outer space and from there, his fake gold caps twinkling, his telescopic eyes rolling, huge as King Kong, he would knock down ballistic missiles and establish eternal peace throughout the whole world.

  And there was still no Pushkin.

  Then the vigilant comrades from the house management committee visited the apartment, led by old man Dushkin, who, if he slipped on the street or the sour cream had turned, never wrote to any less an authority than the Politburo. The comrades wanted to know: Why all the noise and music, and why did the lights burn at night? Your documents, please. Spiridonov took the blame on himself: he was an inventor, he worked at night, the sounds of the zurna and drums stimulated him. He brought out his eighth-grade achievement certificate from boy’s school #415 of the Red Guard region, a publication from Science and Life, “MAKE a handy new MOP from old TOOTHBRUSHES,” and a museum curio: the text of Lenin’s “How We Should Reorganize the Worker-Peasant Inspectorate,” reproduced in encrusted fish bones on a walrus tusk by an unknown folk master. If it’s not allowed, said Spiridonov, then he wouldn’t do it anymore, but his documents were in order, we know the residence rules. We, thank God, aren’t children, we know that everything’s forbidden: we mustn’t stand at night on the side of the Moscow Ring Road, operate without support, pull except in case of emergency, lean over the driver’s cabin, take more than six hundred grams per person, tamper with the packaging, bring a bottle for consumption on the premises, place objects on the handrails, peddle without a license, open before coming to a complete stop, walk without a muzzle, transport foul-smelling, poisonous, or oversized items, talk more than three minutes, descend and walk along the rails, stick our heads out, climb up, photograph, offer resistance, croak, whistle, shout thrice in the dawn like a basilisk, or engage in the sawing of firewood after eleven o’clock at night local time.

  It was better not to joke with the comrades from the house management committee. I kicked out Lyonechka’s pupils; the white cat left on his own, having talked the mice into voyaging with him—and that autumn, by the way, they were seen in the upper regions of the Volga; the cat walked, leaning on a staff in a garland of forget-me-nots, aloof; the mice, six of them, ran behind carrying their tiny belongings, salt and matches—I’m afraid that they lit campfires in inappropriate places, and we were to blame; and to add to it all, Uncle Zhenya—who had arrived at his appointed place, and had already strolled through the official rooms of his new dwelling, yanked on the windows, doors, locks, and blinds, checking for sturdiness, unpacked his suitcases with striped ties, checked ties, and peacock feather ties, explained to Aunt Zina how to use the air conditioner (“Zhenya! Hey, Zhenya! I don’t quite . . . I can’t figure it out!”)—Uncle Zhenya did not relax his vigilance for a second and sent Lyonechka a letter by diplomatic mail with a copy to Lyonechka’s parents, warning that Lyonechka should stop it (he knew what Uncle Zhenya was talking about) and shouldn’t even think of doing any such thing; that someone had already been warned and would follow through strictly, for he had been empowered to do so; and if Lyonechka didn’t turn over a new leaf, Uncle Zhenya would let it be known in certain quarters and then he’d really catch it. And Lyonechka shouldn’t think that just because Uncle Zhenya is in certain places he doesn’t give a hoot. No, it’s all very serious, because—you understand yourself, and especially now, when . . . well, precisely. There you have it.

  Poor Uncle Zhenya—he wrote, he thought hard, and chose subtleties of meaning, but his death had already left the distant forests and, sniffing around, was running to meet him on soft paws, flexing its muscles. Uncle Zhenya finished writing, drank the coffee that was now available, and looked into the empty cup—and all the coffee grinds of the world, all the daisies, palm lines, pictures in distant stars and packs of cards with frowning kings and arrogant knaves had already fallen into the simple contour of a tombstone, trustingly revealing to Uncle Zhenya his imminent fate, but he couldn’t read it, for this knowledge was not given to him. And Uncle Zhenya sealed the envelope and daydreamed of the future’s fruits, of swimming in the sea, of new spare tires for a new car, of official reports and labyrinths of intrigue—he became lost in sweet thoughts of things that eventually came to pass, of course, but that no longer had the slightest relationship to him. It’s strange to think that he died almost at the same time as Judy, and that as he pierced the metaphysical heights, he may perchance have bumped into her in the gray light of otherworldly bodies and not recognized her.

  Uncle Zhenya wasn’t joking: he pushed the buttons available to him, and in October—I remember the day: panic, Lyonechka’s shouts, Judy’s tears, and in the southern side of the sky that night, the distant, trembling dawn of Uncle Zhenya’s malicious delight—in October Judy was summoned to a certain unpleasant place, an official building, and it was suggested that she be so kind as to get the hell out, go wherever she liked, only get lost. Obviously, we didn’t sleep all night: Lyonechka gave Decembrist speeches, his sister Svetlana, in tight ringlets and heavily made up, ran back and forth from us to her parents (Mama was a real cow, and Papa was even more uncouth) despite the late hour (who knows, what if love were suddenly waiting around the corner) conveying, on the one hand, her brother’s radical plans: to marry, emigrate, leave for the north, for the south, for Mars, contrive an act of self-immolation on Pushkin Square, and so forth; and on the other hand—everything that one expects in such circumstances. When Svetlana informed us toward dawn that a telephone call had been placed to the Southern Hemisphere (they announced that “Lyonia something or other,” and he replied “call so-and-so”) all of us—lovers, Spiridonov, Svetlana, and I—took off in an undisclosed direction, as they say, and fought along the way. Svetlana wanted to head for the sea, since she really liked sailors and the gifts they bring to girls of Svetlana’s life-style; I proposed Friazino, where Mama had a little house, planted around with black currants and lupine; Lyonechka was attracted by the taiga (as usual, for ideological reasons); and as a result Spiridonov won, carrying us off to the town of R., where his sister Antonina Sergeevna was a bigwig in the city government.

  •

  Although the authorities in the town of R. lived better than simple people, as the authorities always do—for the May holidays they could sign up to buy marshmallows, Chinese towels, and even Stories of Burma in a colorful binding, and for the November holidays they got to stand on a heated tribune, sincerely waving their mittened hands to the freezing masses—and many simple people dream of such a life while tossing in their beds at night—still, the authorities have their dramas, too, and it seems to me that there’s no point in maligning or envying them from the word go. Antonina Sergeevna, who sheltered us, had to answer somewhere high up in her empyrean for the hot-water pipes, and when the asphalt in the town of R. began collapsing and people started falling irretrievably into the boiling water underground, the empyrean raised the question of Antonina Sergeevna’s responsibility for this unplanned broth. But, after all, the asphalt itself wasn’t under her jurisdiction, it was under the jurisdiction of Vasily Paramonovich, and a stern warning should be issued to him, claimed the angered Antonina Sergeevna, slapping her palm on the light-colored, polished table in the office, and on the dark one at home. When the people collapsed, Vasily Paramonovich was absent, however—a general had invited him to Naryan-Mar to hunt the kolkhoz deer from a helicopter—and he most
decidedly did not care to be sternly warned. He drew Antonina Sergeevna’s attention to his friendship with the general as if it added a lily-white cast to the pure pallor of his nomenclatural raiment; he hinted at such and such and also at this and that, and, deftly summarizing, juggling and shuffling everything, emphasized the fact that had Antonina Sergeevna’s pipes not rusted, the water would not have eroded Vasily Paramonovich’s asphalt. Correct? Correct. While this mutual bickering continued, the water undermined Akhmed Khasianovich’s trees, which fell over and squashed a couple of homeless dogs belonging to Olga Khristoforovna, for whom it was already time to retire on her special pension. Naturally, it was she who bore the brunt of responsibility in the end, since, as she was reminded, the department under her jurisdiction hadn’t shot its quota of ownerless dogs, and during that fiscal period these dogs had insulted the dignity of our people in the public squares and children’s playgrounds, and the dignity of our people is a golden, unchangeable currency, the pledge and guarantee of our continual, unquestioned success, our pride and joy, for it is better to die standing in boiling water than to live on our knees, picking up all kinds of I don’t even want to say what after her undisciplined dogs—mongrels, it must be stressed—and besides, it’s not altogether impossible that it was in fact her dogs that toppled the trees, dug up the asphalt, and gnawed through the hot pipes, which is what led to fourteen people boiling in our dear native earth—not an inch of which will we yield—moreover the Western radio programs are slanderously claiming that it was fifteen, but, ladies and gentlemen, they miscalculated—as always for that matter—since the fifteenth recovered and joined the work brigade of the blind workers’ cooperative that produces Flycatcher sticky tape, and the spurious slander of overseas stooges and the hysterics and yes-men of the right-wing émigrés are only fit for the “Gotcha” column of the regional newspaper.

  Thus was the true face of Olga Khristoforovna revealed, and without a second thought she ran off on her special pension, in order to resolutely write her battle memoirs, for in her time she had galloped with a cavalry squadron, had known Commander Shchors, and even been awarded an engraved sword, which still hung across the raspberry-colored wall rug with blue zigzags that had been given to her by a Dagestan delegation, and under which, on the narrow bed, covered with an army blanket, her unclaimed spinsterhood languished at night.

  By the way, I’d like to note—for the sake of fairness and the bigger picture—that though Antonina Sergeevna acted faintheartedly, sloughing off her guilt in the affair of the boiled citizens of R. (and who wouldn’t have acted faintheartedly?), all in all she remained on top of the situation: she thoroughly understood and appreciated Olga Khristoforovna’s role and her contribution to our successes, to our lofty today, as she liked to say; and although she certainly could have, she didn’t cross Olga Khristoforovna off the Timur Scout’s list of old people, but every October sent her two transitional age adolescents with an axe to chop firewood for the winter. In turn, Olga Khristoforovna tactfully refrained from pointing out that her building had long since switched to central heating and that she didn’t need firewood; she didn’t shoo away the adolescents, but gave them tea with quince jam and showed them how to handle a sword, without a thought to sparing the white geraniums on her windowsill; as a gesture of friendship she even sent them to get cigarettes—she was an inveterate smoker—at a nearby kiosk, which the adolescents then chopped open with the axe around New Year, carrying off four kilos of hard candies and two packs each of cheap macaroni for Mama and Grandma. At the trial they referred to Prudhomme, who taught that all property is theft, and likewise manifested a good knowledge of Bakunin’s works; leaving for the camp, they promised upon their return to apply to the philosophy department, and waved their prison handkerchiefs at a sobbing Olga Khristoforovna.

  As a matter of fact, Antonina Sergeevna was a great gal, even though she wasn’t one of us; she had steel teeth, a head of curls, and the nape of her neck was shaved high. “Girls!” she would say to us. “You don’t know how to work, oh, go jump in a creek, the lot of you, what am I going to do with you?” Her jacket was official and inflexible: under it in a rose blouse resided her warm, unembraceable, already rather elderly expanses; she wore a wooden brooch at her throat, and her lipstick was bright, Parisian, and poisonous—we all had a taste of it ourselves when Antonina Sergeevna would suddenly jump up from behind the bountiful table (“the tomatoes! set out the tomatoes!”) and press our heads to her stomach with emotion, kissing us with unabated strength.

  Antonina Sergeevna took our motley crew in stride, said that she was very, very, very glad we had come—there was much ado, a lot of work, and we, of course, would help her. R. was preparing for a holiday: they were expecting guests from the Greater Tulumbass tribe, which was a collective sister region of the whole R. region. A three-day friendship festival was planned and the authorities were beside themselves. The undertaking was ambitious: to create all the necessary conditions for the Tulumbasses to feel at home. Plywood mountains and ravines were urgently erected, the string factory wove lianas, and in order to be stained black, a color closer to the heart of the sister region, the pigs were forced to wade twice across the Unka River, which had been noted in a chronicle of the eleventh century (“And the Prince came on the Unka River. And it was wide and terrifying”), but had since lost its strategic significance.

  Pushing aside the plates, Antonina Sergeevna immediately laid papers out on the table, and waving away the clothes moths, acquainted us with the heart of the leadership’s arguments. She herself proposed a thorough, comprehensive plan: an international scramble up a smooth pole; a sauna for the chief; a visit to the embroidery factory with gifts of dust ruffles and embroidered towels; a sight-seeing excursion around the city to include the ruins of the nunnery, the house where legend had it another house had stood, and the bakery that was being built; the placing of earth at a friendship tree; the signing of joint protests against international tensions here and there; and tea in the foyer of the House of Culture. Vasily Paramonovich made a counterproposal: a meeting with Party activists; an excursion to the acid guild of a chemical factory; a concert of the voluntary militia choir; the presentation of memorial envelopes; the signing of a proposal to name one of the Tulumbasses an honorary member of the cosmonaut detachment; and a picnic on the banks of the Unka with campfires and fishing. For the dust ruffles he proposed substituting the Urdu language edition of South Seas explorer and ethnographer Miklukho-Maklai’s collected works, which had appeared recently in local stores in unlimited quantities. Akhmed Khasianovich reproached his colleagues with a lack of imagination: all this had been done, he said, when they received the delegation of Vaka-Vaka Indians. Fresh ideas were needed: a mass swim across the river, a parachute jump, or on the contrary, an excursion down into the local limestone caves, but a friendly two-week trek across the desert or the tundra would be best of all; however they’d have to agree on the route immediately and set up stands with lemonade and sour-cream buns along the way. The best gift of all would be a copy of the famous painting The Poet Musa Jalil in the Moabit Prison, since it had everything one could want in a painting: ethnicity, folk elements, protest, and optimism, expressed in the rays of light pouring through the barred window. Antonina Sergeevna objected that, as far as she could recall, there weren’t any windows in the painting, and even if she were mistaken, the prison is depicted from the inside, which could be depressing, and wouldn’t the painting Life Is Everywhere, in which the prison is seen from the outside, be better? The sweet faces of children peer out of the windows in that one, which inspires warm feelings even in unprepared viewers. Vasily Paramonovich, who was not strong on art, said in a conciliatory fashion that the safest thing would be the poster “With Every Year—Our Step Grows Wider,” there are several hundred rolls in the warehouse, we could give a copy to each of the Tulumbasses. They had decided on the poster, but now Antonina Sergeevna wanted to know our opinion, as people more in touch with the capital
.

  Antonina Sergeevna has to be given credit: Judy’s past, present, and future, her looks, name, bad pronunciation, and clothes, which in their abundance and quality reminded one of the increased production at the Three Mountain Manufacturing plant at the end of the year, utterly failed to rattle her: Spiridonov knew where he was taking us. Judy was Judy, the Tulumbasses were Tulumbasses, five guests or twenty-five guests—it was all the same to Antonina Sergeevna, a woman who thought in categories and documents.

  Twilight was already upon us and distant islands awoke in Spiridonov: the ocean seethed, Trinidad and Tobago stirred, a little wind played in the tops of the palms, a coconut fell, the blind coral threw out a new prickly arrow, and seashells opened their gates in the warm murk of the lagoon; and in the smoky dream of a pearl oyster what must have been Paris floated by—in a gray rain, in grape cluster of lights, quivering, Paris floated by like a sweet intimation of existence beyond the grave. Violins squealed like the brakes of heavenly chariots.

  “Keep it down, Kuzma,” remarked Antonina Sergeevna, raising her head from the papers and unseeingly glancing over the top of her glasses. “So then, Vasily Paramonovich wants to call in the blimps—he has good connections—and stretch a holiday banner between them—a few sickles, golden ears of wheat as symbols of peaceful labor—the sketch has already been approved by the censors. In this regard, a question for you Moscow comrades: do we need a little slogan or two for the ears, what do you think?”

  At the word “slogan,” Lyonechka became politically aroused with dangerous speed, and, noticing the negative symptoms (sweat, trembling, electrical lightning storms of protest in his eyes), we all retreated quietly to the porch.