“Ah, memory, memory!” he said to himself, rubbing his forehead. “In fact I do not remember how or when I came to the firm thought of divorce. Little drops of water can change the shape of a stone.”
Once he went with his uncle on an electric train, and for a solid hour, in enough detail, his uncle convincingly proved that women grow old earlier, and lose their appeal. This by no means affects sexual life and men, being in the prime of life, seek carnal joys elsewhere, and the marriage collapses. You need to marry girls younger than yourself and mold them to you, so that everything is where it belongs.
Serge’s uncle himself was unfortunate in his marriage. But he did not get divorced: he lived with this woman whose mind was not a tenth share of his own, but continued to live with her, often washing down his sufferings with vodka. Serge respected him, and therefore trusted in all this rubbish.
The old man finished one sandwich. He again took a sip of whiskey. He started the second.
In his memory, the mean scene emerged when Janna arrived again in Moscow in late autumn. But she stopped at a girlfriend’s, in a dorm of the architectural institute. Serge plodded there with a portfolio with statements of the applications for Janna to agree to divorce. But Janna burned through them with a cigarette. She then said that she wished to make love to Serge, perhaps for the last time. And they loved each other, and then Janna declared that now she would have a child, and no divorce could happen. She took his things, and ran out from the room. He remained naked, humiliated, and suppressed.
What was it? Anger, that destiny turned out this way? The desire for revenge on this youth who has surrendered? Only Janna could know the answer. But this scene made it a disgusting business: his love that did not have time to become stronger in his heart, dissolved. This happened during the period, when this love had to be grown carefully, like a crystal in a test tube.
Serge sent the application for divorce to the Kishinev court—in place of the registration of marriage. He long looked forward to the answer. Only after a year did the summons come.
The students’ everyday lives dulled their former feelings, and he arrived in Kishinev with an empty and cold heart.
They sat again in some uncomfortable, smeared green painted room. “Is it true, you want a divorce?” asked the judge. Serge nodded. "Yes," Janna said, with an absent look around the room. The judge prepared the papers for a long time. Serge looked at Janna. She was quiet and proudly sat on a bench, and to Serge it seemed that once again in the Registry Office everything was done precipitately, incorrectly. In fact the valid reasons for divorce were really not there. He liked this woman. He even admired her. But it was difficult for him to understand whether he loved her then. He recalled Janna’s words then, on the Odessa train platform: “If you leave—we will never meet again.” How wise Janna was, when she authentically knew that separation—was a tomb for love …
“No! Don’t do this!” Serge suddenly screamed. He jumped to his feet and made a step towards Janna. “Janna, Jannoska, my darling, I love you. It is all a lie. I do not want to get divorced. Let’s get out of here.” He lifted her up, and crazily began to kiss her face. She embraced him, and they quickly headed to the door …
***
“Oooh, Oooh!” howled the old man. “Well why didn’t I do this back then? Why did I sit? What was I waiting for, and what was I thinking? That life was only beginning and that there were so many chances ahead. That I would find better. And life—blink—flew by. Don’t separate from your loved ones: just grow with your blood flowing through them … Did I sprout like that? Nope, I did not even try. He bobbed on the waves, like an uncontrollable little craft. Here he would be taken at the end, in the middle of the sea. At the end …”
“Yes-yes, it is time to clear out,” whispered the old man. He bent over to get a bottle of whiskey and he felt tears welling in his eyes. He placed his face in his hands and silently began to sob …
***
Since October, 24th, 1974, the date of their divorce, five years had passed. During this time Serge finished the civil engineering institute, and worked for about a year in his department at the institute. His work consisted of driving waves in a laboratory pool, and studying their destructive force on construction in the high sea. It is impossible to say that this occupation was very pleasant to him. He performed the most complicated formulas, making calculations on the huge institute computer, for which you needed to sign up for your turn. There was a lot of dry paper work. He wanted to dive into life and have communications with people, instead of spending time with books spotted by mathematical calculations.
An opportunity appeared. Somehow in a café, he got acquainted with the executive director of the regional newspaper—he was a fervent and funny guy of 32 years. He told him that there was an opening in his department for a correspondent, and after a while Serge received his first editorial task. After a second, and a third, he was hired by the newspaper and began to adapt to journalistic work.
In two years he decided “to go to the people”.35 He also went to a Komsomol36 for Outstanding Construction in Siberia. In each edition, he agreed that he would write about the glorious work of the Moscow building team where he went as one of its leaders. But he never had a chance to write. No work deeds were ever completed. They worked on the construction of the Surgut beer factory. And the whole group consisted of children and little girls who were not able to find work close to their homes. They came without specialties, and without desire to work, but with a greater desire to get drunk until they squealed like pigs. Not a night passed without a fight in some hall or in some room. They fought among themselves, then fought united—against the young people from the Kazakhstan group.
Bruises were raised, blood flew, and teeth were knocked out. What body of communistic propaganda could publish articles about such a life? Serge could not lie and write cheerful materials. At last, most of the violence was driven out, and many ran away from there. Life in the dorm calmed down and even achieved some civilized features. It formed a drama group, and Serge began to write and direct his own plays, reflecting everyday life on the “Outstanding Komsomol Construction” site. They started having parties with contests and dancing, and many started subscribing to the sports section, so that life began to get better, in comparison to the initial period …
One day when Serge entered the dorm, the senior babysitter (oh God, what a position!), who distributed the mail, gave him a slip of paper saying that he would get a telephone call at nine o'clock that evening. In full confidence that the conversation had been ordered by his parents, Serge sat in a waiting room and waited for the call. But the voice that came over the telephone line turned him to stone. On other end of the wire was Janna. His Janna! No, she was not his anymore. For a long time, she was not his Janna! The conversation was about nothing. Serge learned that she married and had a daughter, Allochka.37 She said she was doing well and had a husband in Kishinev, and asked how he was doing “in his poor Surgut”. “What are you doing there fool? You are ruining your life? Do you think it is given to you forever?”
In response, Serge mooed something unintelligible. The stiffness did not go away. The allotted call time was over, and the quick beeps of a hang up were heard. “Even here she found me again,” he thought. “She was not lazy: in fact, she needed to order a long distance call and eventually pay. What for? Almost six years after the divorce.” Serge went down a footpath, creaking in his felt boots. Pines, branches weighed down with snow, looked as if they wished to share the grief that unexpectedly tore into his core. “She is not indifferent to me. Otherwise, why would she call? Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe she wanted to tease me. And here I am. I live without you and everything is all right with me, and you are freezing there in Siberia. Yes, the husband, the child …” Something like a pain insultingly made its way to his chest and ruthlessly squeezed it.
“In fact, I married a girl in ‘76 too, in Kiev. I too, got acquainted with her on vacation on the sea, on the Cas
pian Sea. And then, we continued to live in different cities, and divorced easily without shouts and tears.” Suddenly an idea came into his head that he never thought of before. Precisely. In fact Tanya, his second wife, very much resembled his first, Janna. She too was tall and long-legged, with long black hair. But she was without that vital spark which was, and in the course of time probably only, developed in Janna. “Certainly, I tried, obviously not realizing, to find a copy of Janna. To revive Janna, but in another person. The attempt did not go right, because another woman like Janna does not exist in this world.”
“Fool!” is an inherently insulting word, but when she said it somehow softly with some kind of vexation the word found material embodiment and grew in meaning. “What have you done for the past six years?” he asked himself. “What have you achieved? You already lost two wives. You remain without children. What do you have, except for these felt boots and a short fur coat? With whom do you communicate? With boys and little girls who never held books in their hands? Who have you surrounded yourself with here? What do you wish to fish out from this?”
With such cheerless ideas, Serge returned to the dorm and fell on the creaking cot.
It is quite probable that this call was a catalyst. Serge began to gather his things and soon returned to his publisher …
***
Some more years passed. Serge got up to his ears in the business of constructing youth-inhabited complexes—it was really alive work during the musty years of the early 80s. Janna let him know about herself again. He found out that she divorced, but she did not dwell on the details or the reasons, at least with him. Anyway, she was free again. Serge was also free, and in the summer of ‘84 both of them vacationed in Crimea. They were absolutely close to each other: she was in Koktebel, and Serge was near Sudak. She called him to come, but he did not move in her direction.
***
“Well why, why, why?” the old man moved his lips, unscrewing the top from the bottle. “What or who stopped you? That passion from which you were then on vacation? But in fact, you left her as soon as you arrived in the Moscow station. Did you believe that it is impossible to glue together a broken vessel? Or, were you stopped by the fact that this woman already had a child? No. All these reasons are nonsense. You have not moved from your spot due to your laziness, and you could not recognize where your happiness is. And it was next to you, just a few kilometers away. You could have met, and the warm sea, the hot sun would revive old feelings. In fact you remember the good. The bad is forgotten. How to know, in any case, that back then, it was not too late …”
The old man inserted the neck of the bottle into his mouth and greedily drank the bitter liquid. He frowned and rinsed an apple in the seawater …
***
Several more months passed. Serge received a letter:
My daughter has a warm nose. She is like from an animated cartoon. This person is the purpose of my life. She sits down at the piano, and plays and sings a simple song. I am happy.
And when I distract myself from haste and hurry, I notice sometimes the blue sky, the sun, and it becomes sad. Why? Is it necessary to explain it on paper? I wrote you in my thoughts, many letters, but on paper they would seem so banal. And here is this one. Shall I send it in 1973 or in now? And what if someone laughs about it, and what if it seems ridiculous or sentimental?
Your eyes appear unexpectedly; they appear from there, from ‘73, they appear with sea drops on eyelashes … Everywhere: on the face of a clock, in a trolley bus, on a beach, in a hurry. I talk to you, but I speak, and for the answer, I do not wait. Then I banished you to an eleven-year distance, but not for long. How have you lived all this time, then? What didn’t you love, and what did you love? It seems to me, I know the answers to these questions. Somehow, you said that it is necessary to wait for two years. I agreed and I waited eleven years. And for what? Simply, for a conversation with you. Maybe you are the one, with whom it is possible to conclude a phase of life—in fact these 11 years are a whole eternity. All of us are afraid of banalities, but in fact life consists of them. And the clean bed and the tasty meal is not everything that is necessary for a two-legged. And the fact that from our gorgeous head fall curls of gold, is just that firstly, you have not seen me for a long time, and secondly, that our globe spins, and we are spinning together with it, and moreover, we try to overtake its rotation with personal and public transportation and we do this so diligently—that some add one year—and others immediately add eleven.
I am torn by a desire to meet; that is why I play out different possibilities. Do you wish to take part in this game?
It seems to me that our meeting would not be a return to the ashes. Can you understand all this in the Moscow vanity?
I was glad to write to you, remaining with the surname of my first husband.
Janna
***
Yes they met. But both were late. Serge had already married a third time, and with his wife, waited for the birth of a child. He did not tell Janna this.
Janna was more than beautiful. The years did not show on her. She was graceful, but she was already a mature woman, lush and stunning. Serge looked at her and understood that in the Moscow hurry he wasted eleven years when he could have lived them with this smart and strong woman. And to live them absolutely differently and for sure his life would be full, and he would be more joyful than he was all these past years. But now, he entered the next phase of his stay on this ground, and he was already keen for the creation of a new family in which he already would have children.
They sat in his sister’s apartment, and they gradually talked about everything. However, Serge tried to imagine the opportunity of a reunion … What has climbed into his inflamed head? That the child won’t be born or that he would leave his wife with the child? Timidity and cowardice—they caused this delirium. He sat on the sofa, and his heart was broken from regret that they lived different lives, instead of one joined. And the reason for it was only his cowardice. He, now as a man, was attracted to this woman. He wouldn’t mind recalling once more the warmth of her body and then leaving, perhaps forever. But at this time she appeared more strong than he, and overcame in herself the desire for closeness. Although, who’s to say, maybe she did not want it anymore. This meeting seemed so sad—like from an orchestra pit, sounded the coda.
But life ordered that many years later they would hear from each other again.
The Soviet Union collapsed into the many pieces that were its components. Republics became separate states. Moldavia became Moldova, and represented something distant and almost inaccessible. Somewhere there was Janna, and Serge remained in Russia, which was pulled as with a vacuum cleaner, into the days that were extremely vague. Both above and below,38 clearly no one knew what to do. They needed to develop market relationships, or in other words to revive capitalism. It seemed to many, that having thrown off communistic fetters, life would immediately improve, would develop the creativity of the masses and cause the sun to blossom above the country once again. But the reality was far from this vision. Almost all branches of the national economy began to decay and wither. Business life almost stopped. The budgetary sphere received a deep crack. People had no money, yet strangely they wished to eat, drink, equip their dwellings, travel, and in general have everything that enters into the concept of a full-blooded life. And people, on any step of the hierarchical ladder that they found themselves on during this muddy time, began to reach for this full-blooded life independently, as their own conscience allowed. It was like sharing a vast pie, which was previously called the material and financial base of the great country. But rules on how to divide it did not exist. Under the law of the jungle, tidbits go to the strongest. Gangster factions bred like mushrooms. They were at war among themselves and with the authorities, although the authorities were not strong enough to oppose them. Racketeering prospered. Everyone who tried somewhere, somehow to earn money, had to pay a tribute irrespective of whether you stood in a bazaar and you
traded, or you sold, or you tried to be involved in private enterprise or commerce.
Strangely enough, in this initial period Serge was fortunate. He became occupied with the then-popular tourism that placed foreign guests with families. There came mostly Germans, English, and Americans, to gape at this strange country that had been closed by the Iron Curtain. Foreigners paid several tens of dollars for accommodation with families—for them a trifle, but for us, huge money. They drove around Moscow by taxi, paying with packs of Marlboros—and everyone was happy. Serge was happy too. His family did not starve. And he managed to carry his wife and then still small children “on excursion” to Hungary (which also at that time shed its communistic skin), and to visit almost all the countries of Europe, and even to go to America.
But one day Serge thought that he could earn more with construction, since he was a certified and registered engineer, and he opened his own business. Once again, he forgot that from the good you do not search for better. But he made this step, and it subsequently led to his best years of blossoming, spent in the continuous struggle against debt and poverty …
The beginning, though, did not foretell anything bad. Orders were coming in. The firm grew. Serge equipped his office and sat there at the head of a long table. Everything was as it needed to be: a secretary, an accounting department, a marketing department, a supply group, and working brigades. And during this period, somehow a phone rang. It was Janna. She zeroed in on him again, though she called from the USA where she had recently moved for permanent residence. Outside it was 1992. Janna suggested that he trade with America, and sent a list of prices on foodstuffs. In fact, hungry Russia needed to eat something. But why should he engage in a business unusual for his firm, when his business was booming? The contact faded, but the shining skin on Serge’s face was barely wrinkled from the surging memories. “Well,” he thought, “why is she not here, next to me, or why am not there? In fact, together we could move mountains. She has a bloodhound’s nose to sniff out the direction of where and what you need to move. This is how … she moved to America, taking with her both her daughter and her mother! Amazing!”
Love Is Never Past Tense... Page 9