Mikha was not the most eligible young man in the department, since there were also several singer-songwriters, whose fame as wildly popular youthful bards was just beginning. Mikha couldn’t compete with them. He wrote poems, too; but he certainly couldn’t sing and accompany himself on the guitar. Still, he was a striking redhead, exceptionally conciliatory, who enjoyed great success among the girls, in particular those from out of town. His presence was indispensable at every student gathering or party.
Oh, he would have jumped at the chance to go to Alyona’s birthday party; but he didn’t even have the money to buy her the most modest gift. So, out of a sense of pride, he decided not to go. He had no one to borrow it from. Ilya was out of town, and he still owed Anna Alexandrovna fifteen rubles from the month before. He hadn’t taken any money from Aunt Genya since he had started receiving a student stipend. This month, he had run through his funds early.
This fancy box on the buffet was just the thing, though! A dull-enough present, of course, but one couldn’t arrive empty-handed …
He listened to his aunt’s exhortations about marrying a Jewish girl. Then he asked whether he could take the box of chocolates to someone as a gift. His aunt had other plans for the chocolates, but Mikha turned on the charm and reminded her, as if by chance:
“The day after tomorrow I’m taking you to the cemetery; I haven’t forgotten!”
The trip to Vostryakovo Cemetery took precedence over all other forms of entertainment for her, including the theater, movies, and visits to living relatives. She had never traveled to the distant cemetery alone, however.
His aunt understood the trade-off. Mikha got the box of chocolates and ran off with the elk under his arm to Pravda Street, where Alyona lived. He arrived—and it transpired! He was in love. Helplessly and inextricably, as had happened to him once before in his childhood, when he went to Sanya’s for the first time. This time he fell in love with the household: with the head of the household, Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov, Alyona’s father; with his wife, Valentina; with the cabbage pies, the beet salad, and the “music on the bones”—records pressed on old X-ray film. Imagine, a rousing Gershwin number resounding from a hipbone! But, most important, of course—he fell in love with Alyona, who was not at all haughty or arrogant at home, but, on the contrary, quiet and sweet, embodying all the feminine charm the world had to offer.
They lost themselves in kisses on the balcony, and a mad tenderness held in check the mad passion that flared up in Mikha at his first touch of her fragile collarbone, her delicate wrists, her limp, childlike fingers.
Some people have talents as straightforward as apples, as obvious as eggs—for mathematics, for music, for drawing, even for mushroom-picking or table tennis. Mikha’s talents were more subtle. In fact, at first glance, he seemed to have none. Rather, he had abilities: poetry, music, drawing.
His true talent was not visible to the naked eye. He was endowed with such emotional sympathy, such an unbridled, absolute capacity for empathy, that all his other qualities were subordinated to this “universal compassion.”
He fulfilled the requirements of his studies in the philological department with pleasure and ease, but his interest in defectology arose from the very depths of his personality, from his gift of empathy. From the beginning he had set his hopes on teaching literature. He hungered to continue the tradition established long ago by Victor Yulievich, and he already saw himself entering the classroom and declaiming the greatest lines of Russian poetry … into the air, into the world, into the cosmos. And the boys and girls sitting around him—some of them! some of them, at least!—would be receptive to these sounds, and the kernels of meaning they contained.
Before getting his work assignment, Mikha went to see Rink, to ask his help in finding an appointment in a school for the deaf. For who else would bestow the treasures of poetry and prose on them?
Yakov Petrovich studied Mikha through his glasses, and asked him more questions about his life than about his profession. He concluded that this was the first time in his experience that a philology student had wished to work in the area of defectology.
“There is a very good boarding school for deaf-mutes where you could be of use, and where you could broaden your skills. It’s a wonderful corrective learning institution, just outside of Moscow; but you would have to live there yourself. They need a good Russian literature and language teacher. Go there and have a look around. If you like what you see, come back and we’ll continue our discussion,” Yakov Petrovich suggested.
It took Mikha three hours to reach the school—he traveled first by commuter train to Zagorsk, then by bus, which he had to wait for, and then a half hour by foot along a forest road. It was early spring, and a light rain was falling, through which the woods showed a pale green. The rain whispered in last year’s grasses, and the new growth was already pushing up through the dead foliage. It seemed that the rustling was the delicate sound of its growing. A bird screeched at regular intervals. Perhaps it wasn’t even a bird, but a wild animal. It occurred to Mikha that the residents of this place couldn’t hear these living sounds. On the other hand, city dwellers didn’t hear them either, since the urban noise drowned them out. And a poem began to take shape in him already:
Out of silence, rain, and growing
grasses, sounds are born midst tender
da-da. Music, da-da, da-da
da-da, da-da harks the sender …
No, it wasn’t coming together.
Out of silence, rain, and growing
grasses, hark!—from embryos spring
symphonies so wild and tender,
da-da music floods surrender …
Well, it had promise. He liked exact rhymes and regretted that all of them had been used many times before. This is what he said about the well-worn railroad ties of poetry that had been laid down long ago. He enjoyed the process of seeking them, but realized that one couldn’t get very far on them. Brodsky had not yet begun his triumphal conquest of the world, compelling, through his long lines and his absolute contempt for this “tic-toc” and “da-da,” the impoverished but inspired doggerel to cease.
Now the forest ended, and the grounds of the school began. A two-story wooden house stood on a small rise surrounded by dozens of small, cottage-like structures. There wasn’t much left of the ancient fence—squat columns crowned with spheres eaten away by time were interspersed with worn gray palisades. The gate had long since vanished. Fat linden trees grew at uneven intervals—the remnants of a tree-lined avenue. It was already past lunchtime, and there was no one to be seen. He walked along the soggy, still bare earth toward the porch and knocked on the door. No one opened. He waited a bit, then the door flew open. A woman with a bucket of water and a dirty rag floating on top was standing in front of him.
He laughed and introduced himself to her. Aunt Genya, a slave to superstitions, signs, and portents, would have deemed this an auspicious beginning: the bucket was full of water, albeit dirty.
And, truly, it would have been hard to imagine a better beginning. In the director’s office three women and an older man with a small mustache were drinking tea with jam. Mikha knew the director was a woman, and he concluded that she must be the Armenian woman, who also had a small mustache.
“Hello. I’d like to talk to Margarita Avetisovna. I’m here on the recommendation of Yakov Petrovich…” Before he managed to say the last name, they all broke out in smiles, and hurried to pour him tea and serve him jam in a little dish.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door and a boy of about twelve came in. He reported something, speaking only in a language of gestures.
“What happened, Sasha?” they asked in a chorus. “Well, tell us, you know how. Speak, speak, you can do it.”
“Da dag wan awa.” He struggled to articulate the sounds.
All four of them surrounded him, and a short woman with a thin plait wrapped around her head asked him loudly, stressing every sound:
“Which dog?
Nochka or Ryzhik?”
“No-ka,” the boy said.
“Nochka. Don’t worry, Sasha. She’ll come back.”
The boy made another gesture—placing one hand on another, and making an upward movement. This was a question.
“She’ll get hungry and come back for food,” the woman with the mustache said.
That has to be the director, Mikha thought.
The boy said something else with his hands.
“Listen to me, Sasha. She’ll get hungry and come back for food.”
When she made the sound “oo,” she pursed her lips, pushing them as far forward as she could.
The boy nodded and left.
“Sasha has only been here six months. And he began learning very late,” the woman with the plait said.
“Yes, it’s only six months,” the one with the small mustache confirmed.
“Five months, Margarita Avetisovna,” Gleb Ivanovich, who had his own mustache, said. Very politely, so Mikha knew that she was indeed the director.
Ten minutes into their little tea party, Mikha knew that if they wouldn’t take him on as a teacher, he would stay here and work in any capacity: whether as a janitor, a stoker, or a gym teacher.
They showed him the classrooms; there were four of them. And only forty-two children in all.
In one of the classrooms a girl was standing at the chalkboard and communicating something with her hands. The others listened to her—by watching.
“We don’t renounce sign language completely. But we feel that if one begins teaching our methods early enough, most children can learn to speak.”
“I would like to work here. I lived in an orphanage until I was seven, until my relatives took me in. I know I’m probably not the sort of person you’re looking for … I’ve already begun studying sign language, but I’m not proficient yet. But if you would agree to take me on…”
They welcomed him with open arms.
He signed a contract that no one else would have accepted, and started work without even taking the vacation that was his due as a recent university graduate.
Everyone was dissatisfied with Mikha’s departure for the boarding school: Aunt Genya, who cried on the day he left as though he were departing for the next world, although he would return again the following Sunday; Marlen, who would inherit some of Mikha’s responsibilities for looking after his mother; Alyona, with whom his on-again, off-again romance was at a low point, but who shrugged her shoulders in consternation nevertheless, saying, “Why a boarding school? Why?” Alyona’s father, the extremely clever Chernopyatov, felt that the closer one’s job was to the city center, the better the job. And the provinces, anything beyond the capital city limits, were not even fit for living.
Even Anna Alexandrovna expressed concern—not about his career, but about the hygienic conditions there. She believed Mikha would be lice-ridden and dirt-encrusted in no time. Sanya thought about how long it would take to travel from that back of beyond to the Conservatory, but he didn’t say anything. Ilya was upset that he was losing his friend just at the moment when they might have been able to earn a decent income working together.
Mikha was now teaching Russian language and literature to deaf-mute children. He worked alongside a speech therapist, and things were going very well. Mikha developed an approach that even earned the praises of Yakov Petrovich. He introduced rhythm exercises into the lessons. He clapped out the various poetic meters, and the children hummed their iambs and trochees. How happy they were when he expressed his delight with them; and how generous he was with his praise!
The school was unique in both its poverty and its plenty. The government subsidies were paltry, and even with extra compensation the salaries of the staff were incommensurate with their qualifications and with the time they invested in their work. The materials they had at their disposal were insufficient. But the absolute dedication of the teachers, their selflessness, and their pride in the results of their efforts, which were evident to all, outweighed all these other factors. Not to mention the atmosphere of creativity and love.
Almost a third of the children had been chosen from orphanages. The rest had been brought by their parents, who hoped that the school would enable them to communicate with the world more easily. The children from orphanages had an easier time than the others, since they were already used to life in an institution. The children with families usually stayed for only a year or two, at most.
Almost every Sunday Mikha returned to Moscow. He visited Aunt Genya and caught up on all the chores and errands he had missed during the week—from washing the floors and windows to buying groceries. Since the time Mikha had started college and the financial help from his relatives to his aunt had stopped, she had become tight-fisted and capricious. The sausage had to be Mikoyan, the cheese had to be Poshekhonsky, the milk Ostankino, and the fish—fresh carp or frozen perch—from a store that was closed on Sundays. So Mikha occasionally came to town on Saturdays just to buy this carp, if it was available.
After finishing his household chores and errands, he flew over to Alyona’s. She would either be waiting for him with mascara on her lashes, which meant that she had turned her face toward him that day, or without any makeup at all. This suggested that her thoughts were elsewhere. Why her moods were so volatile he didn’t know. He would try to find out from her, but she would just shrug her hair off her shoulders and slip away without explanation.
Then he would sit down with Sergei Borisovich in the kitchen and drink tea or vodka, depending on the time of day, the presence or absence of guests, and the mood of the host.
What an incredible human being! What a life! Mikha marveled at Chernopyatov. Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov’s father, born in Batumi, had been one of Stalin’s closest companions. He was killed later than all the others, in 1937, when the leader had already done away with most of the friends of his youth. Sergei Borisovich was still just a boy the first time he was imprisoned, several weeks after his father’s arrest. This was just a trial run—a children’s penal colony. When he was eighteen they transferred him to a prison camp. In 1942, he was released from the camp and sent into exile. In Karaganda he met an “Algerian”—his future wife, Valentina. That was when he learned the meaning of that satanic geographical moniker, ALZHIR. It meant: Akmolinsky Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Homeland. Among the thousands of women were the mothers of Maya Plisetskaya, Vasily Aksyonov, and Bulat Okudzhava. Alyona’s grandmother on her mother’s side was the widow of a prominent Party member from Ryazan.
Valentina fell under the “FMTH” category: Family Members of Traitors of the Homeland. She was seventeen when they executed her father and arrested her mother. She managed to escape the fate of 25,000 FMTH minors who were sent to orphanages. She followed her mother, and ended up in the village of Malinovka, a forced-labor settlement. Her mother died a year later.
That was where she met Sergei. They were both twenty years old, and both of them dreamed of having a family. They married young, thus saving each other’s life. Alyona was born in 1943. In 1947 they received permission to return to Russia, and they moved to Rostov-on-Don, where they found Valentina’s relatives. Sergei Borisovich passed his high-school graduation exam, then entered college. The life about which they had dreamed began. In 1949, he was sent to prison again. Stalin’s hand refused to loosen its grip. He was released in 1954; and his life began again for the third time …
Alyona was sick to death of hearing these stories. She would lock herself up in her room and turn on loud music. Sometimes she sat in her room for hours on end, scribbling with a slate pencil on rough paper: whimsical patterns of curlicues and cascades. Sometimes she simply left, without saying a word, ignoring Mikha altogether.
* * *
Mikha sat with Sergei Borisovich, picking up commonsense wisdom. And what a talent he had for sharing it! You would say something to him, and he would hold it up to scrutiny and then reveal its full significance to you, like a picture that blossomed into co
lor when you held it underwater. He had such a deep understanding of life, of its inhumanity and absurdity and cruelty!
And the people! The guests who visited Sergei Borisovich, for all their diversity, had one thing in common: they were inveterate, implacable enemies of the authorities. They understood the nature of the system, its deep-rooted injustice. One was a geneticist, another a philosopher, yet a third a mathematician. And at the very center of all of them stood Sergei Borisovich—hardheaded, astute, clever—actively committed to the public welfare.
Mikha loved him, too, because he was the male embodiment of everything that attracted him to Alyona: barely discernible wrinkles in the corners of the eyelids that rose slightly upward, small folds pointing downward at the corners of the mouth, the small bones and lightness of movement characteristic of dwellers of the Caucasus. True, Alyona had inherited a delicate pallor from her mother, but Sergei Borisovich, with his admixture of Circassian blood, was dark-haired and swarthy. He was a real man—a father, brother, friend. An antidote to Mikha’s fatherlessness, something he had never yet managed to come to terms with. Sergei Borisovich treated Mikha with kindness, but too much condescension. That was, in fact, how he treated most people—he seemed to look down on them slightly.
Sometimes Alyona, having done her eyelashes, seemed kindly disposed toward Mikha. At those times he would follow her wherever she wished; they would walk around Moscow, her limp, fine-boned hand in his—what intense joy!—and he would touch her hair, breathing in its pungent, feathery scent. He would speak off the top of his head, and from the bottom of his soul, reciting poetry. He had already gone through Mayakovsky, had absorbed Pasternak, and was in those days brimming over with Mandelstam. Brodsky began a bit later with him. She listened, fell silent, hardly deigning to respond. Also with condescension.
Sometimes, during these felicitous periods—there were three such during Mikha’s life in Milyaevo: the winter of 1962, at the very beginning of Mikha’s stay in the boarding school; then in the spring of 1963; and at the end of 1964—she suddenly came to him in the middle of the week, and stayed overnight with him in the utility room that had been allocated to him. Mikha was nearly beside himself with unexpected joy.
The Big Green Tent Page 45