White Walls

by Tatyana Tolstaya

  To retell a life you need an entire life. We’ll skip it. Later, perhaps, sometime or another.

  I’m really thinking about the whale: how he dove into the cold Norwegian waters suspecting nothing, not a thought for the red-bearded northern fishermen; how he wasn’t on his guard when he rose up to the gray surface of the sea, to the un-extinguished yellow sunsets in the overflow of the northern waters, fair-haired girls, pines, stones, Grieg sonatas, to that sea sung by fashionable writers in the modern’s minor key. He didn’t need those baleens, those horny formations on his palate, those so-called whiskers or bones intended as an instrument for filtering plankton; the northern girls found a better use for them. A slender waist; luxuriant hair; a difficult love; a long life; children dragged by the hand across seas and continents. And then the end of war, then the victor’s roar, and the Allies sent us tins of good stewed pork; we ate it and spat the bones, teeth, and whiskers into the empty containers. But it’s the bottle-nosed whales that have the teeth, while ours, our very own, personal, gray, right, rorqual, our poor Yorick, didn’t even eat fish, he didn’t wrong any fishermen, he lived a radiant, short life—no, no, a long, long life, it continues even now and will continue as long as someone’s uncertain, pensive fingers keep fishing out and tossing back, fishing out and tossing back into the tin on the shaking windowsill these hushed, stunning skull shards of time. Clench a fragment of Yorick in your fist—milky and chill—and the heart grows younger, pounds faster, and strains; the suitor wants to snatch the young lady, and water spouts like a fountain to all ends of the sea, and the world circulates, whirling, spinning, wanting to fall; it stands on three whales, and splits away from them into the head-spinning abyss of time.

  Translated by Jamey Gambrell

  WHITE WALLS

  IN 1948, Mikhail Avgustovich Janson, a pharmacist of Swedish descent, built a dacha near Leningrad to rent out to city folk for the summers. For himself, he added a little greenhouse and two small rooms over a chicken coop. He planned to live a long, happy life there, eating fresh eggs and cucumbers and selling valerian tincture made from plants that he lovingly grew with his own hands. By June, he was ready for an onslaught of tenants with trunks, children, and an unruly dog. The Lord had something else in mind, however. Janson died, and my family, the tenants, later bought the dacha from his widow.

  All this was years ago. I never saw Janson, and I don’t remember his widow. If you spread out our photographs in a fan of seasons and years, you could watch the Genghis Khan–like horde of my brothers and sisters multiplying madly; you could see how our dog grew old and decrepit, how Janson’s cozy homestead fell apart and was overgrown with goosefoot. Where there once were chickens, you’d find seven pairs of skis and a pile of skates, and on the former site of the greenhouse you could discover my sisters and me lying in the grass, our arms flung wide, tanning our young bodies in the white satin brassieres of the Khrushchev era and flowery underpants that didn’t match anything.

  In 1968, my brothers and sisters and I climbed up to the attic. We found some hay that Janson had cut years before Stalin’s death and an enormous trunk filled with tiny corks, with which Janson had intended to stopper his vials of valerian. There was another trunk as well, cinched with metal straps and dry to the touch; in it six pairs of huge lightweight felt boots of a sombre color had been perfectly preserved. Under the boots, in a careful pile, lay several dark dresses for a small, birdlike woman; and under the dresses, already disintegrating into molecules, was some grayish-yellow lace—you could pulverize it with your finger and scatter it on the bottom of the trunk, where time had already ground and scattered a dusty layer of some unrecognizable thing that had once belonged to someone.

  In 1980, to plant strawberries, we dug up the tall weeds in the corner of the garden where, according to the old-timers, the pharmacist’s Eden had once blossomed and borne fruit. At a certain depth, we unearthed a large iron object that scared us silly. The same old-timers assured us that it wasn’t a bomb, because no bombs had fallen here during the war, but, still frightened, we reburied it, packing down the earth on top of it.

  When we replaced the stove, we found nothing of Janson’s. Nothing again when we replaced the stovepipes. When the kitchen collapsed into the cellar and the washbasin into the chicken coop we had great hopes, but all in vain. When we patched up a huge hole the proletariat had left between the perfectly new pipe and the perfectly new stove, we found some trousers and were overjoyed, but they turned out to be our own trousers, lost so long ago that we didn’t recognize them right away.

  Janson had dispersed, disintegrated, vanished into the earth. His world had long since been buried under the trash of our four generations. And shockingly new children had already grown up, children who didn’t remember the plaque trumpeting “M. A. Janson,” which had been stolen by an admirer of nonferrous metals, children who hadn’t spent hours throwing tiny corks at one another, who had never discovered the white umbrellas of stray valerian plants in the overgrowth of stinging nettles.

  Two summers ago, the summer of 1997, we mistakenly calculated that our dacha was half a century old, and, in honor of the event, bought rolls of white wallpaper with green garlands. Well, we decided, in that shed where the sink is falling off the wall, where jars of dried-up linseed oil and boxes of rusty nails lie forgotten on the shelf, we will create a little Versailles. First, we’ll scrape off the old green-and-white checkered wallpaper and then we’ll glue our pompadour onto the bare wood. If we’re going to do a real European-style renovation, then let’s do it right.

  But under the green and white checks there was white wall-paper with dark-blue speckles; under the speckles, a grayish spring motif with weeping-birch blossoms; under that, lilac wallpaper with embossed white roses; under the lilac, brownish-red wallpaper densely decorated with maple leaves; under the maples appeared newspapers—Oryol and Belgorod liberated and a celebratory fireworks display; under the fireworks, “the people demand the death penalty for the bloody Zinoviev-Bukharinite dogs”; and, under the dogs, a photograph of mourners in line at Lenin’s funeral. Under Lenin, in a group portrait taken in Galicia, there were dashing officers, belted and thickly mustachioed, who gazed directly and anxiously at us as if they had never been plastered over with starch glue. And then, under that fraternal grave, under graves, graves, and more graves, on the very bottom, next to the wood, with a last hurrah, came “MUSTACHIN CREAM” (what else!) and “AMERICAN HIGH SOCIETY USES ONLY KOKIO LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY TEA. DUBININ TEA WAREHOUSE, MOSCOW, 51 PETROVKA STREET” and “WHY AM I SO YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL? FREE BOOKLET BY IONACHIVARA MASAKADO” and “WHEN YOU BUY CIGARETTE PAPERS, DON’T SAY, ‘GIVE ME A BOX OF GOOD PAPERS,’ SAY, ‘GIVE ME KATYKA PAPERS.’ ONLY THEN CAN YOU BE SURE THAT YOU HAVE CIGARETTE PAPERS THAT DON’T TEAR, DON’T WRINKLE, ARE THIN AND HYGIENIC. YES, ONLY KATYKA PAPERS WILL DO.”

  Having started to rip and crumple, we kept on ripping and crumpling layers of time, as brittle as old glued newspapers; we tore newspapers that were as brittle as layers of time; having started to tear, we couldn’t stop; from under the old paper, from under the bubbles and buckles, fell a fine wood dust, the residue deposited by the timber worms, the mice, and the bark beetles, after the weevil and its family had joyously feasted on dry starch, leaving behind a micron-size cushion of air between the strata of history, between the tectonic plates of someone else’s misfortunes.

  That washroom, smelling of soap and rotting boards, had been the bedroom of the pharmacist Janson. Intending to live a modest, happy, and long life there, he had lovingly pasted to its walls all the newspapers he’d kept from childhood—page after page, with nothing thrown out, nothing wasted—and, over that, his first layer of wallpaper. Meticulous and clean as he must have been, a Russified Swede, he had built himself a cozy little sleeping nest, a private corner, behind a thick door with a heavy bolt, and under the floor his own clean chickens. The little room next door, with a balcony and windows facing the sunset and the black Karelian spruce,
had been his dining-living room: there he could drink a cup of coffee with chicory, sitting in a hard Lutheran armchair; there he could think about the past and the future, about how he had survived up to now, how he was going to grow medicinal herbs, and how when the first snow fell he would take a walk in his lightweight black felt boots, leaving tracks.

  We tore off all the paper, everything down to the naked boards. The excitement of cleaning seized all four generations of our family, and we sandpapered and rubbed. We worked hard, careless of fingernails and scrapers. The local store, which for thirty years had got by in a complete stupor, never offering anything but rubber boots in the wrong size and hard candies called “pillows with jam,” came to life in the new era and crammed the shelves with Johnson & Johnson products. What could one Janson do against two Johnsons and all the other foreigners? From abroad, there were quick-acting cleaners and spot removers—aerosols to erase memory, acids to eliminate the past. We scraped everything off: the white roses on a lilac background, the bloody dogs, the puffs of frosty breath lining up to view the revolutionary son of a public-school inspector, and the rows of tomorrow’s cripples and casualties, trustingly buying round tins of the charlatan “Mustachin Cream” a week before their mutilation or death, counting on love and happiness, as had the pharmacist Janson, who bought six pairs of felt boots for future legs, now unneeded.

  We scraped the boards bare, down to the faint rings on the planed wood. We let the walls dry out. Then we took a large brush, dipped it in guaranteed, sticky, synthetic glue, and, following the instructions, slathered it the right way—with no bubbles—on the back of the Versailles wallpaper. Then we pressed hard with an old cloth and rubbed the fresh wallpaper onto the fresh wall, which still smelled like the Johnsons. The glue took, and the wallpaper stuck in a passionate kiss without air.

  All in all, it was a good summer near Petersburg, dry and hot. Everything dried quickly. The next morning, our wallpaper looked as if it had always hung there: no dark spots, not a blotch. It wasn’t so difficult after all—this tearing off and gluing on. Of course, the effect wasn’t exactly palatial, and, to be honest, it wasn’t the least bit European. Not that there wasn’t a certain artistic quality to it, but, frankly—why beat around the bush?—it was a sorry sight. The room looked like a flowery barn. A doghouse. A shelter for Pushkin’s wretched Finn, born blind. Things never seem the same on the walls as they do in small pieces, do they?

  Now, we could always buy more wallpaper, plain white wallpaper with no pattern—these days you can find everything, after all—and then it would look great. Then our misguided decoration would be hidden under even, white, aristocratically indifferent, democratically neutral, benign layers of Buddhist simplicity. Plain white is straightforward and elegant. At home in the city, everyone’s switching to it, and eventually I’ll switch, too. White wallpaper. Or, better yet, just a paintbrush or a roller, water-based paint or plaster, and presto!—all clean. Nothing superfluous. Just welcoming white walls.

  Cautiously, so as not to disturb us, like a barely perceptible shadow tiptoeing in wool socks over the new linoleum, with felt boots under his arm and a bouquet of valerian stars in his hands, with corks and vials stuffed in his bulging pockets, with the mustachioed and shaven cripples of all times in his frightened memory, Mikhail Avgustovich Janson takes his final leave. A Swede, a Lutheran, a petit bourgeois, a pharmacist, a hardworking gardener, a frugal and meticulous man, faceless, with no distinguishing marks—Mikhail Avgustovich, the heirless husband of a small wife, an inhabitant of small rooms, a discreet preserver of the forbidden past, a witness to the history we scraped off the bare walls of his former shack. Mikhail Avgustovich, about whom I know nothing and now will never know anything—other than the fact that he buried a strange iron object in the garden, hid some useless rags in the attic, covered the impermissible and unrecoverable under wallpaper in the bedroom. With my own hands, I tore the last traces of Mikhail Avgustovich from the walls that he had held on to for half a century, and, no longer needed by anyone in this new, bleached, laundered, and disinfected world, he faded, probably forever, into the grass and the leaves, into the chlorophyll, into the roots of the weeds, into the mute, unnamed, and blissful kingdom of pharmacopoeia.

  Translated by Jamey Gambrell

  SEE THE OTHER SIDE

  A HOT DAY in May in Ravenna, the small Italian city where Dante is buried. Once upon a time—right at the start of the fifth century A.D.—the Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire to this city. Once there was a port here, but the sea receded long ago, and in its place are swamps, roses, dust, and vineyards. Ravenna is famous for its mosaics; hordes of tourists move from one church to another, craning their necks to glimpse the dim luster of tiny multicolored smalti high up under the dusky vaults. Something can be made out there, but not very well. One of the glossy postcards will give you a better view, though awfully bright, flat, and cheap-looking.

  I’m suffocating, hot, and dusty. I’m depressed. My father died, and I loved him so much! Once, long, long ago, almost forty years back, he passed through Ravenna and sent me a postcard showing one of the famous mosaics. On the reverse side—in pencil for some reason, he must have been in a hurry—he wrote: “Sweetheart! I have never seen anything so sublime (see the other side) in my life! Makes you want to cry! Oh, if only you were here! Your Father!”

  Each sentence ends with a silly exclamation mark—he was young, he was cheerful, maybe he’d had a glass of wine. I can see him with his felt hat cocked in the manner of the late fifties, a cigarette between white teeth—which were still his own then—beads of sweat on his forehead. Tall, slim, handsome: his eyes shine happily behind the glass circles of his spectacles . . . The postcard—which he dropped in a mailbox, lightheartedly entrusting it to two unreliable postal services, the Italian and the Russian—shows heaven. The Lord sits in the midst of a blindingly green paradise of eternal spring, white sheep grazing all around. The two unreliable postal services, Russian and Italian, crumpled the corners of the postcard, but it was all right, the message was received and everything could be seen.

  If heaven exists, then my father is there. Where else would he be? But the only thing is, he died—he died and doesn’t write me postcards with exclamation marks anymore, he no longer sends tidings from all points of the globe: I’m here, I love you. Do you love me? Do you share my pleasure and joy? Do you see the beauty that I see? Greetings! Here’s a postcard! Here’s a cheap, glossy photograph—I was here! It’s wonderful! Oh, if only you could be here, too!

  He traveled all over the world, and he liked the world.

  Now, as much as I can, I follow his footsteps. I go to the same towns, try to see them with his eyes, try to imagine him young, turning that corner, climbing those steps, leaning on the railing of the embankment with a cigarette in his teeth. This time I’m in Ravenna, a dusty, stuffy, exhausting place like all tourist sites where crowds fill narrow streets. It’s a dead, trivial, hot town, with no place to sit down. The tomb of Dante, exiled from his native Florence. The tomb of Theodorich. The mausoleum of Galla Placidia, sister of Flavius Honorius, the very same one who made Ravenna the capital of the Western Empire. Fifteen centuries passed. Everything changed. Everything grew dusty, the mosaics crumbled. What had once been important—is unimportant; what once excited—has vanished in the sands. The sea itself receded, and where merry green waves once splashed, there are now wastelands, dust, silence, hot vineyards. Forty years ago—a whole lifetime ago—my father strolled and laughed here; his myopic eyes squinted; he sat at a street table, drank red wine, and tore off bites of pizza with his own strong teeth. The dark blue night fell. And on the edge of a table, in pencil, he scribbled a few hurried words to me scattering exclamation marks all over, expressing his delight and love for the world.

  The overcast sky is stifling. It’s hot, but the sun can’t be seen. Dust is everywhere. Land that was once the bottom of the sea now lies around the town in wide, fertile fiel
ds; where crabs once crawled, donkeys now pick their way; in place of seaweed, roses grow rampant. Everything died and went to seed. Along the once splendid streets of the Western world’s capital, disappointed American tourists wander in pink sweatshirts, unhappy because the tourist agency has tricked them once again: everything in this Europe is so dinky, so small, and so old! Fifteen centuries. Dante’s grave. The tomb of Galla Placidia. My father’s grave. Some sort of naive green paradise on a wrinkled postcard.

  What was it that amazed him here? I find the right church, I look up—yes, there’s something green there, high up under the vault. White sheep on a green meadow. The usual dim light. The discordant hum of tourists below. Their fingers point, they look for explanations in their guidebooks. Such-and-such a century, such-and-such a style. Everything’s the same everywhere, always. You can hardly see.