And that was just what happened. There was a lull in the drama while the guests were amicably partaking of the grilled meat. It ended when Lisa, having polished off her shish kebab, started brandishing her skewer.
“Friends, I take my leave of you! That’s it—I’m going to the land of the Finns. I’ve fucking had it with all of you!” She wriggled her nose and tittered. “But I adore you. Remember that I’m coming back to check up on you! You can’t hide from me! The KGB is amateur hour next to me! I’m a one-woman secret agent bureau! Don’t you dare insult the King! Or Shura, either. She may be just a dairy cow, but she’s a good person. Good Doctor Ouchithurts will heal the masses; she’ll feed one and all. She’s a nurse. If you need a shot, whether it’s in the ass or in your arm, you can count on her. But don’t put the moves on her, she hates that. Her hormones are on strike. Whereas mine are raging! They make the perfect pair: one more impotent than the other!”
Going limp, she clung to the King’s neck again, then set up an urgent, primal peasant’s wail, singing:
“Oy, sweet lord of my soul, you poor little thing! Poor impotent King! Well, why are you all smirking and grinning? He’s better than any one of you! If he could get it up, his worth would be beyond compare!”
The King patiently indulged his ex-wife in her wailing. He was completely impassive in the face of her public indictment, which would so devastate any ordinary man. He towered over the rest of them in height, and nobility, and dignity—even in the privilege of impotence among all the sexually obsessed and tormented lovers, the beloved, and the forlorn and unloved, men and women.
He’s a king among men, thought Olga.
Shura and Masha hid away in shame in the house, in the kitchen. Shura howled, and her daughter comforted her:
“Mom, stop—you know what Auntie’s like! She’ll go away, and everything will go back to normal again.”
Masha was indifferent to all this sophisticated riffraff. She had her own plans: to settle down in Moscow, to marry a man with an apartment, and to graduate from college. She was just as ambitious as her aunt, but she had been hewn with an axe, rather than a fine chisel.
The wedding party was gaining momentum. An enormous bottle of Absolut that had been bought in a Beryozka store was put away in minutes. The supply of home brew bought from the neighbors in three-liter jars, however, never ran out. The bitter Bulgarian Gamza, in pretty bottles covered with woven straw, was nearly untouched, though an entire case of cheap port had already been consumed. An Ampex tape recorder, one of the King’s trophies from his final voyage, had been set up on a table pushed against the window. Bebop music, powerful and exuberant, poured into the yard. Everything seemed jarring and incongruous, almost a travesty—the American tape recorder, a true rarity, the epitome of a boyhood dream come true; the refined, inspired music of another culture; the awkward, reeling drunken wedding against the background of lush July greenery, in which the single indispensable thing was lacking: mutual love between the man and the woman. Soon the tape recorder, exhausted, emitted a little hiss and then fell silent.
Sinko picked up his guitar then, and everyone gathered around him. He brushed his elongated fingers, with their long, chipped fingernails, over the strings of the guitar, and they seemed to coo like a woman. He touched his fingers to the strings again, and they answered him in kind.
“It’s almost like his fingers are talking to the guitar,” Olga marveled.
Ilya put his hand on her shoulder, and she felt happy. They had been sitting at the table for several hours already, and she longed to touch Ilya, to experience the “awareness of the body” that had begun to melt away. She was too shy to be the first to touch his hand or his shoulder. But he touched her, and this was proof that the feeling was still present.
“Have you never heard him live?”
“No, only on recordings.”
“That’s completely different. He’s a true artist. He sings Galich’s songs better than Galich himself.”
* * *
Lisa left for Helsinki the same evening. By train. At half past nine Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov, who had been keeping a close eye on Lisa the whole time, went up to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said:
“It’s time to go, Lisa.”
Lisa seemed to shrink back, but she went into the house with Chernopyatov. Soon they emerged with a suitcase. Sergei Borisovich was taking Lisa to Leningradskaya Station; they had agreed on this beforehand. Everyone streamed out into the road to gather around the car. Sergei Borisovich wore an air of practical efficiency, and looked irritated. He opened the trunk of his old blue Moskvich. At that moment, Lisa began to hum and spin like a top. She clung to the King’s neck again, scolding him rather incoherently for past sins, and again reminding him of his impotence. Artur stroked her head with his hairless pink hand, and suddenly began trying to persuade her to stay:
“Forget about that Finn, Lisa. Stay with us, no one is driving you away!”
Lisa suddenly howled in rage and let her ex-husband have it.
“Not driving me away! What about Shura? I’ve arranged for Shura to live here with you! Where would she go now? She sold her house! She came here with her child in tow! No way, I’m no longer your wife! Enough! Shura’s your wife!”
Then she turned to Shura.
“Well, why are you standing there with your eyes bugging out? Get ready! You’re coming with me, to see me off! Artur doesn’t need you here to scratch his back—there’s always Lenka Vavilon. You’ll scratch his back, won’t you, Lenka? Shura, get a move on! Let’s go!”
Chernopyatov stopped Lisa.
“Listen, I’m not driving all the way back here again. How is she going to get to Tarasovka from the station in the middle of the night?”
Lisa took a sizable packet of money out of her purse and waved it around.
“My sister’s coming with me to Leningrad. Aren’t you, Shura?”
Shura looked haggard and drawn. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day—she had only drunk one glass of champagne. Her head ached and her stomach was cramping from hunger.
“Wait a minute, I’ll just get my jacket.”
Sergei Borisovich’s face darkened. He stood next to the car, its doors agape, then got behind the wheel impatiently. Lisa had sobered up a bit. She shoved Shura, clutching her jacket, into the car. Lisa got in behind her. She rolled down the window, and shouted:
“Hey, people, keep it up! Keep it up! In our village, weddings last at least three days!”
The car started moving, carrying off the King’s wives. The King waved magnanimously.
Olga touched Ilya’s shoulder.
“Let’s go home. I think I’ve had about enough of this.”
Ilya finally managed to find his backpack in the house, and they left the celebration without any ado—they didn’t even bother to say good-bye. They were just in time for the commuter train; they didn’t even have to wait. They boarded, put their arms around each other, and fell asleep. They slept all the way to Moscow.
Early the next morning, the King in his lair set about repairing the tape recorder.
Guests lay scattered about in unlikely places, having dropped off to sleep from an excess of celebratory cheer. Lenka Vavilon woke up and went into the yard, where she saw an unfamiliar man peeing next to the outhouse. She was surprised—he had made it all the way to the outhouse, why hadn’t he done his business inside? She understood the reason when she tried to go into the outhouse herself. She found a comfortable spot in the raspberry bushes, where she discovered that she was not the only one who had come there in search of cozy intimacy.
A flock of sparrows was feasting on the leftovers strewn about the table. Meanwhile, two chickadees were sitting in the branches of an aspen tree, speculating about whether there was room for them among the rabble. Lenka Vavilon gathered up the dirty dishes, poured the rest of the water from the bucket into a large pot, and turned on the gas, preparing to boil water for washing up. She began scraping the lef
tover scraps of food into the slops pail, fishing out stray cigarette butts that might harm the neighbor’s piglet.
* * *
Shura accompanied Lisa all the way to Leningrad. Lisa bought her a ticket—albeit in a crowded sleeping car, rather than a separate compartment. Shura was offended, but said nothing. She put her sister to bed, then returned to her own car.
“I’m just a spineless idiot. My whole life I’ve let Lisa push me around, even though I’m six years older,” Shura berated herself.
Shura slept the sleep of the dead, but she was the first to rise in the morning and emerge onto the station platform. Lisa was the last. Still not completely sober, she begged forgiveness and kissed Shura’s chapped hands, lingering especially on yesterday’s burn mark. Shura was always flustered and clumsy. She always burned herself on this spot when she took her pies out of the oven.
Although she was not very fresh herself, Lisa was wearing a freshly laundered blouse—Shura had not forgotten to wash and iron one for her. Now her bra was underneath the blouse, where it belonged, and she wore a string of beads she had made herself out of tightly rolled strips of paper from shredded pages of the magazine America. Her fingers, with their stubby fingernails, were loaded down with cheap silver jewelry and stones. She wore a short, light blue skirt. The new stockings that Ville had brought her for the wedding—he had given her a whole pile of them, twelve in all!—already had a very visible run along the calf.
The sisters kissed and embraced one last time, and Lisa barked out her final instructions as Shura retreated.
An hour and a half later, at the Soviet-Finnish border, Lisa was already going through customs control. The Russian customs officers were the first to search her suitcase and her purse. Lisa, still a bit tipsy, pulled out a packet of photographs and showed the officials her father, and her mother, and her older sister, and her hunting trophies, and some pictures of the natural scenery of the Far East. She had no foreign currency; all her Russian money—every last kopeck of it!—she had given to her sister. Her documents were all in order: a new passport, a visa, a marriage certificate. The border guards laughed at her good-naturedly—she was a strange bird! A little prostitute who had found a scrap of Finnish happiness for herself.
One of them with fewer moral scruples had managed to put his hand on her skinny behind, and she giggled. The other one, an older man, had given her some fatherly advice:
“Go easy on the alcohol over there, sweetie. All Finns are drunks, never mind the dry laws!”
The train rolled over the border—an invisible line running through identical unprepossessing forest tracts, bald patches, and boulders.
Then the train halted. The Finnish customs officers and border guards came aboard, and the whole process was repeated—only they didn’t rummage through her suitcase and purse. And it all happened much more quickly and efficiently.
The Finns left, and the train pulled away from the station. Lisa got up, swaying, her little purse swinging on its thin strap, and walked down the aisle to the bathroom. She hung the purse on a hook. She looked at herself in the mirror, and didn’t like what she saw, so she stuck her tongue out. Then she sat on the toilet. From her secret place she pulled out a tube of much smaller dimensions than what it normally accommodated, and peeled the condom off it. She threw the condom in the toilet, and without opening the tube, she put it in her purse. Then she stuck out her tongue at her reflection again. Three microfiches—an entire book—were on a treacherous journey. But the main leg of the journey, the most dangerous of all, had already been traversed.
Ville adored his Russian wife. From the very beginning, he had said: “I know you’ll ditch me. But I never loved anyone until you, and after you I’ll never love again.”
At one time he had worked in Russia as a journalist; now he had lost his job. It didn’t matter. Tomorrow they would fly to Stockholm, and from there on to Paris. And the banned manuscript, the author of which was doing time in the camps, would be lying on the desk of the publisher, who had been eagerly awaiting it for a long time.
Ville hated communism, loved Russia, and adored his wife, Elizabeth. Ilya loved his work. The microfiche of the manuscript, which had been smuggled out of the prison camp by the author’s wife in another of the most secret places, had been expertly photographed. Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov, who was directing the entire three-stage (at least) anal-gynecological operation, had always known that everything would work out just fine. Lisa never let anyone down.
A TAD TOO TIGHT
After she had seen her sister off, Shura returned to her new husband and the remains of their wedding. Most of the guests had departed, of course, but the truly inveterate revelers were still celebrating on the third day. By this time, they had forgotten all about the host, not to mention the hostess. Shura threw herself into the cleanup. After fashioning new rags out of two old shirts of Artur’s, she began from the kitchen and moved backward through the house like a quiet but powerful tractor, scraping off successive archaeological layers of dirt. Masha assisted her silently: she drew water from the well, washed the windows, and laundered the ancient curtains. Artur didn’t allow them into his room, but Shura knew that sooner or later she would gain admittance to it. Although Artur had ascended to the rank of husband, she continued to regard him as a beloved brother-in-law.
On the fourth day, when all the guests were gone except for a certain Tolik, who still couldn’t manage to sober up, Artur summoned her to his den, opened his desk drawer, and, pointing a huge finger into its depths, said:
“Shura, take money from here when you need it.”
There was a lot of money. Shura felt abashed, and waved her hand dismissively:
“You give it to me yourself.”
Without even looking, he grabbed as much as his hand would hold and thrust it at her. She was surprised: it turned out he was a rich man. Lisa had always claimed that his pockets were empty, that she had to try to make do as best she could. It didn’t tally.
It was awkward enough taking it directly from the drawer, but accepting it right out of his hand like this made her even more uneasy.
She had lived on her own for many years. Her husband had died on the job, log rafting, when Masha was only two.
“I’d like to send Father some,” Shura said on the fly, though the thought had only just occurred to her.
“Go ahead, send something to Ivan Lukyanovich. Here, take some more.” Again he put his hand in the drawer and drew out a wad of bills. He was amused that he had switched wives, but that he still had the same father-in-law.
“Thank you, Art. Father hasn’t been doing too well recently.”
The next day Shura sent Masha to the Central Telegraph Office to dispatch the money to her father in Ugolnoe. Even though Masha was not even eighteen, she knew her way around the city far better than Shura did. Lisa had twice taken Masha with her to Moscow. The last time Masha had stayed with Lisa in a rented apartment for a month and a half, and she had wandered the streets alone from morning till evening. She liked walking around alone and getting to know the city.
Now Masha was hurrying to the telegraph office to send the money. After that she planned to go to Red Square to visit Lenin’s Mausoleum, if she was lucky enough to get in. But the window she needed at the telegraph was closed. A spurious, hand-lettered sign dangled in front of the window, reading: “Maintenance break. Back in fifteen minutes.” Masha stood in line for fifteen minutes, then left, walking toward Red Square. Nothing had changed in the past three years; only, it seemed to Masha, there were now more people. Suddenly, Red Square opened out in front of her. Her thoughts leapt back to Ugolnoe, to her friends Kate and Lena. If only they could see all this beauty with their own eyes.
When I settle down here, I’ll invite them. First Lena, then Kate, Masha decided.
The line at the Mausoleum seemed to go on forever, so Masha headed in the direction of GUM, the state department store. There she found another line, spilling out the side doors.
A girl of about Masha’s age took a pair of boots out of a long white box and showed them to another girl. The other girl went pale with envy. The sight took Masha’s breath away, too; she had never seen such boots! Tall, reaching almost to the knee, they had a small heel. They were made from beautiful brown suede. Her grandfather, who was good at leatherwork, would never have been able to make anything like this.
Masha had never been subject to secret passions or mad longings, but now she was burning inside. She would have given anything for those boots. Unfortunately, she had nothing to give. At that moment, she had even forgotten about the money wrapped up in a handkerchief in her pocket, secured with a safety pin.
“Are you last in line? I’m after you!” a girl with a big hairdo said, nudging her.
That was when Masha remembered about the money—she had a hundred rubles with her! And it seemed she was already standing in line; there was even someone behind her.
She stood there for four hours. Twice a rumor spread down the line that they had run out of boots. It turned out that there were no more size 37s, but other sizes were still available. By the time Masha got to the front of the line, all the boots were gone, both large and small. But mounds of boxes were stacked on the counter. Women who didn’t have any ready cash were writing layaway checks, valid for two hours, and rushing off to fetch the money. Whoever didn’t manage to redeem the boots within the allotted time would lose them forever—other anxious women, their happiness almost within reach, were clamoring to buy them, bills clutched in their sweaty fists. Masha was one of them. And she was in luck. The long cardboard box with the soft, brown creatures inside was hers. The whole way home her hand kept straying into the depths of the box, to touch the tender flanks enveloped in darkness …
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