As he said this Pyotr Petrovich took a few quick steps, pushed off hard, and soared up into the warm night air. His flight (if it can be called that) lasted almost no time at all. He swayed out a yard or two from the wall, spun around his own axis as he swung forward, and crashed into the wall just in front of his companion, who jumped back in fright. Pyotr Petrovich lost his balance and had to grab him by the shoulder, which of course made it quire clear that this was certainly no reflection or shadow. It was all very awkward, with lots of puffing and panting. The shock produced a very nervous response from Pyotr Petrovich’s companion: he shrugged Pyotr Petrovich’s hand off his shoulder, leapt backwards, pulled the hood off his head and shouted furiously:
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m very sorry,” said Pyotr Petrovich, feeling himself turning puce—glad that the night was so dark. “I really didn’t mean...”
“What did you tell me,” his companion interrupted, “that it would be nice and quiet, that you’re not violent, you simply had no one to talk to? Wasn’t that what you said?”
“Yes,” whispered Pyotr Petrovich, lowering his face into his hands, “that’s what I said. How could I possibly have forgotten? But I was having such strange thoughts, as though you weren’t really you, but just my reflection in the windows or my shadow. Funny, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s funny,” said his companion. “Now at least have you remembered who I am?”
“Yes,” said Pyotr Petrovich making a strange movement with his head—something between bowing it and pulling it back into his shoulders.
“Thank God for that. So you decided to jump me to check whether I was a reflection, did you? And you babbled on about the Tarzan swing just to distract me?”
“No, of course not!” cried Pyotr Petrovich, removing one hand from the electric cable and pressing it against his chest. “That’s to say, at first perhaps I was just trying to distract you, but only at the beginning. But as soon as I started talking, it was about things that have tormented me all my life. The things that I feel in my heart.”
“You say some strange things,” said his companion. “I’m beginning to fear for your sanity. Just think about it—you walk with me for two hours, you talk with me, and then you start seriously believing that the person with you is your own reflection. Do you think that sort of thing would happen to someone normal?”
Pyotr Petrovich thought about it.
“Nnn-no,” he said, “it wouldn’t. It does look absolutely crazy from the outside. A talking reflection, walking with his back towards you—the Tarzan swing... But you know, from inside me it was all so very logical that if I told you the sequence of my thoughts, you wouldn’t be surprised at all.”
He looked up. The moon above the opposite roof was hidden behind a long cloud with jagged edges. For some reason this seemed like a bad sign.
“Yes,” he began again, “if you analyze the subconscious motivation for my actions, then it looks as though I simply wanted a moment of glory...”
“The reflection,” his companion interrupted, raising his voice, “that’s something I could accept. But what I find really strange is your garbled nonsense about the Tarzan swing. About launching into flight and understanding something or other. Just what is it you want to understand?”
Pyotr Petrovich looked up into the eyes of his companion and immediately shifted his gaze to the other’s shaven head.
“How shall I put it?” he said. “I feel uncomfortable speaking in banal clichés. Truth.”
“What truth?” asked his companion, pulling his hood back up. “About yourself, about other people, about the world? There are many truths.” Pyotr Petrovich thought about that.
“About myself, I suppose,” he said. “Or rather, about life. About myself and about life. Of course.”
“Want me to tell you about it, then?” his companion asked.
“If you know, yes,” Pyotr Petrovich said with sudden hostility.
“Aren’t you afraid that this truth will be no more use to you than a dead cat?” his companion asked with equal hostility, nodding back the way they had come. “He’s hinting at something,” thought Pyotr Petrovich. “Mocking me. Applying psychological pressure. But he’s got the wrong man for that. What’s up with all this sadism, anyway? All I did was shake him by the shoulder, and I apologized afterwards.”
“No,” he said, straightening his shoulders and gazing firmly straight into his companion’s eyes, “I’m not afraid. Get on with it.”
“All right then. Does the word ‘lunatic’ mean anything to you?”
“Lunatic? What, those people who don’t sleep at night and go wandering about on the cornices of buildings? I know about... O my God!”
V
More than anything, his sudden enlightenment resembled that plunge into cold water which Pyotr Petrovich had tried to tell his pitiless companion about—and not just because he had only just noticed what a cold night it was. Pyotr Petrovich looked down at his feet and saw that the narrow silvery track that he had been following for so long was actually a narrow tin plated cornice that was deeply bowed under the weight of his body.
Beneath the cornice there was empty space, and beyond the space, about 100 feet below, the lights of the street lamps were duplicated in the puddles, the dark crowns of the trees trembled in the wind above the gray asphalt, and Pyotr Petrovich realized with horror that it was finally and absolutely real, that there was no way of ignoring or avoiding the fact he was standing there barefooted in his underwear at an immense height above the nighttime city, with only some miraculous force preventing him from falling. It was astonishing that he maintained his grip—there was absolutely nothing for his hands to grasp hold of except minute variations in the surface of the concrete wall—and if he leaned out even slightly from its cold, damp surface, then the implacable force of gravity would have pulled him downwards.
Not far away he could see an electric cable, but in order to reach out and grab it, he would have to take several steps along the ledge, and that was quite unthinkable. Squinting downwards he could make out the parking lot far below him, the cigarette-pack-sized cars, and a tiny patch of asphalt that someone might have left open specially for him. The most important evidence that the nightmare he had fallen into was the ultimate truth was the smell of garbage smoldering somewhere close—it was a smell that immediately settled all questions and seemed to carry within itself an entirely adequate proof of the ultimate reality of a world in which such smells are possible. Pyotr Petrovich’s soul was swamped by a tidal wave of terror that, for a fraction of a second, washed everything else away. The emptiness at his back was sucking him in and he pressed himself as flat against the wall as an election handbill from some unknown party that has absolutely no chance of victory.
“Well?” asked his companion.
Pyotr Petrovich looked at him—cautiously, so as not to glimpse the abyss under his feet for a second time.
“Stop it,” he said, quietly but very insistently, “please stop it! I’ll fall.”
His companion sniggered.
“How can I stop it? It’s happening to you, not to me.”
Pyotr Petrovich realized that his companion was right, but a moment later he realized something else, something which instantly filled him with indignation.
“That’s just mean and nasty,” he shouted, getting really worked up, “you can do that to anyone, tell him he’s a lunatic teetering on the edge of a void that he simply doesn’t see! Out on the cornice... why, just a minute ago, you... and now...”
“That’s true,” said his companion with a nod. “You have no idea of just how well you put it.”
“Then why are you doing this to me?”
“I can’t tell what it is you want. First your head’s filled with one thing, then with something else. Just now you were meditating on where you could fly to on a Tarzan swing. It was quite moving, honestly. Then you wanted to hear the truth. And that’s s
till not the final truth, by the way.”
“So what do I do now?”
“You? No need for you to do anything,” said his companion, and suddenly Pyotr Petrovich noticed that he wasn’t really holding onto anything and was even standing at something of an angle, “it will all work out.”
“Are you mocking me?” hissed Pyotr Petrovich.
“Not at all.”
“You bastard,” said Pyotr Petrovich in a weak voice. “Murderer. You’ve killed me. I’ll fall now.”
“Now it’s begun,” said his companion. “Insults, hatred. Next thing I know you’ll jump on me again or start spitting, the way some of them do. I’m going.” He turned and unhurriedly began to walk away.
“Hey!” yelled Pyotr Petrovich. “Hey! Wait! Please!”
But his companion did not stop—he merely waved a feeble farewell with a pale hand protruding from the sleeve of his cassock or cloak. A few steps more and he turned the corner and disappeared. Pyotr Petrovich closed his eyes again and pressed his damp forehead against the wall.
VI
“Well then,” he thought, “that’s it. That’s the end now. I’m finished. All my life I wondered what it would be like, and this is how it turns out. I’ll just sway a little, throw up my arms, and—steady, Pyotr, steady—I wonder if I’ll cry out? Pyotr, steady now—don’t think about that. Think about anything else, but not about that. Please. The main thing is to keep calm, no matter what. Panic means death. Remember something pleasant. But what is there to remember? What was pleasant about today, for instance? Except perhaps for the conversation by the statues, when I was explaining to that guy with the shaved head about love. Oh God, now I’ve remembered him again. What an idiot I am. Why couldn’t I simply have kept on walking, just looking around and enjoying life. But no, I had to start wondering who he was, whether he was a shadow or a reflection. I got what I deserved. Serves me right for reading all kinds of rubbish. But then who is he, really? Damn it, I’d just remembered. No, I didn’t, but he told me himself—Where on earth did he come from?”
Pyotr Petrovich half opened his eyes for a second and saw that the wall beside his face was bright and yellow—the moon had come back out from behind the clouds. Somehow it made him feel a little bit better.
“Right,” he thought, “so where did I meet him? Before the statues, that’s for sure. When the statues appeared, he was already there. And we chased the first cat before the statues too. That’s right, he didn’t want to at first, no matter how hard I tried to persuade him. And then I started spouting on and on to him about nature, and about love—I knew I shouldn’t be talking to him; that you have to keep these things inside if you don’t want to be insulted—How does the Gospel put it—‘don’t cast your pearls before swine, for they will trample them,’ isn’t that it? What a life! Even if you really like something, maybe the way the moon lights up statues, you have to keep quiet about it. You have to keep quiet all the time, because if you do open your mouth you’ll regret it. It’s strange, all right. I understood that a long time ago, but I’m still suffering because of my trusting nature. Just waiting all the time for the insults to start—and this one, what an insulting swine he was—a real swine, swine, swine. He told me everything would be all right. How condescending of him—Damn him anyway, here I am thinking about him for almost an hour, and the moon could go at any moment. He’s not worth it.”
Pyotr Petrovich turned away from the wall, looked up, and smiled weakly. The moon was shining through a ragged round gap in a cloud, which made it look like its own reflection in a hole in the ice on some nonexistent river. The city below was calm and quiet, and the air was filled with the barely perceptible scent of the blossoms of plants he could put no name to.
In a far-off window Sting began to sing in a piratelike bass—too loud, really, for the nighttime. It was “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” a song that Pyotr Petrovich remembered with affection from his younger days. He forgot about everything and began listening, and at one point he even blinked rapidly at the memory of something long forgotten. Gradually his pain and sense of hurt abated. With every second the parting from his chance acquaintance seemed less and less important, until eventually he couldn’t even understand why he had been so upset about it only a few minutes ago. When Sting’s voice began to fade, Pyotr Petrovich took his hand away from the wall and snapped his fingers in time with the despairing English lyrics, in a gesture of farewell:
And you’ll never see my face
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there’s a moon over Bourbon Street.
Finally the song ended. Pyotr Petrovich sighed and shook his head in order to gather his thoughts. He turned back, stepped around the corner, and jumped lightly down a couple of yards, where it was easier to walk. The night was still as mysterious and tender, and he didn’t feel at all inclined to part with it, but he had a very busy morning tomorrow, and he had to sleep at least a little. He looked around him one last time, then glanced briefly upwards, smiled, and slowly set off along the gleaming strip of silver, kissing the night wind as it touched his lips and thinking that, essentially, he was an entirely happy man.
The Ontology of Childhood
We’re usually too caught up in what’s happening to us in the present to suddenly shift our perspective and start remembering our childhood. An adult’s life is pretty much self-sufficient, and it has none of those empty spaces that can be filled up by experiences with no direct link to things actually going on in the world around us. Only occasionally, very early in the morning, when we wake up and see before us the most ordinary of things—perhaps simply a brick wall—do we remember that things used to be different once, not the same as they are today, even though little has actually changed since that time.
There’s that crack between two bricks, and in it you can see that strip of cement that bulges out like a wave. If you don’t count those years when, simply for the sake of a change, you lay with your feet pointing in the other direction, or that time so very long ago when your head was still gradually receding from your legs and the view of the wall in the morning changed a little bit every day—if you don’t count all of that, then this rigid vertical scroll in the crack between the bricks was always the first greeting of the day from the big wide world in which we live: in the winter, when the wall was saturated with cold and sometimes even covered with an incredibly beautiful silvery coating; and in the summer, when two bricks higher up a triangular spot of sunlight with ragged edges appeared (but only on certain days in June, when the sun moved far enough to the west). Somehow during that long journey from the past into the present, the objects around you have lost something fundamentally important, some absolutely indefinable quality. There’s no way to explain it.
Take the way the day used to begin: the grownups went off to work, the door slammed behind them, and the immense space around you and all the different objects in it became yours. All prohibitions ceased to apply, things seemed to relax and stop hiding whatever they had been hiding. Take any kind of object at all, say a bunk, top or bottom; three parallel planks, supported on iron cross braces, three rivets in every brace. If there was even a single grownup around, then for sure the bunk would sort of squeeze itself in, make itself narrow and uncomfortable. But when they went off to work it became wider, or at least it was somehow possible to make yourself comfortable on it. And every one of the planks (they still hadn’t started painting them then) was covered with a pattern; you could see the annual rings in the wood that had been sawn through at the most incredible angles. When the grownups were around they disappeared, or else it never entered your head to pay any attention to such things in the heavy atmosphere of conversation about breaks between shifts, work norms, and the nearness of death.
The most remarkable thing, of course, was the sunshine. Not even the blinding spot of light in the sky, but that beam of bright air that started at the window, with the fluffy grains of dust and tiny little coiled-up hairs suspended in it. Their mo
vements were so smooth and rounded (and in childhood you can see the entire swarm from a distance with incredible clarity), that you had the feeling of an entirely separate little world living according to its own laws, a world you either once lived in or can still get into and become one of those weightless points of light.
Then again, that’s not really exactly what you feel, but there’s no other way of putting it, there’s no way of pinning it down exactly. It’s just that you see yourself surrounded by realms of absolute freedom and happiness that are hidden behind masks. The sunlight has an astounding ability to bring out the very best in those few things that it comes into contact with on its way from the upper corner of the first window to the lower corner of the second.
Even the iron plated door communicates something about itself that makes you realize there is no need to be afraid of what might appear from behind it. There’s really nothing to be afraid of at all, is what the strips of light on the floor and the walls tell you. There is nothing in the world to fear. At least, not as long as this world carries on talking with you; afterwards, at some undefined moment, it begins talking about you. In your childhood you are usually woken by the abusive morning conversations of the grownups. They always begin the day swearing; their voices drawl thickly and stickily through your continuing dream and you can tell very well from the intonations that neither the ones who are shouting nor the ones who are making excuses are actually experiencing the feelings that their voices are trying to express. It’s just that they’re barely awake and haven’t completely shaken off the grip of what they saw in their dreams, even though they can’t remember it anymore. They’re trying to convince themselves and everyone else as quickly as possible that the morning, and life in general, and the few minutes they have to collect themselves, are all for real.
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories Page 12