Pushkin Hills

by Dovlatov, Sergei

  “I’ll say it one more time, colour is ideological in aspect!”

  (It was later discovered that he wasn’t an artist at all, but a store clerk from the Apraksin shopping centre.)

  This innocent phrase for some reason infuriated one of the guests, a typeface designer. He charged at the store clerk with his fists. But the clerk, like all men with shaved heads, was brawny and acted fast. He immediately removed a false tooth, supported by a pin… swiftly wrapped it in a handkerchief and tucked into his pocket. He then assumed a boxer’s stance.

  By now the artist had cooled off.

  He was eating stuffed fish, exclaiming between bites:

  “Fantastic fish! I’d like to have children with her. Three of them.”

  I noticed Tanya right away. Right away I memorized her face, both apprehensive and indifferent. (In all my years, I have never understood how indifference and alarm can coexist in a woman.)

  Her lipstick stood out against her pale face. Her smile was childlike and a little anxious.

  Later someone sang, trying hard to imitate a recidivist thief. Someone invited a foreign diplomat, who turned out to be a Greek sailor. The poet Karpovsky told extravagant lies. For example he said that he was booted from the International Pen Club for artistic hooliganism.

  I took Tatyana’s hand and said:

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  (The best way to overcome inherent insecurity is to act as confidently as you can.)

  Tanya acquiesced without hesitation. And not like a conspirator, more like an obedient child, a young lady who willingly does as she’s told.

  I moved towards the door, flung it open and froze. Glistening before me was a sloping wet roof. The antennas soared black against the pale sky.

  Apparently the studio had three doors. One led to the elevator, another to the underbelly of the heating system, and the third to the roof.

  I didn’t feel like going back. And judging by the rising volume inside, the evening’s celebrations were headed for a brawl.

  I hesitated for a moment and stepped onto the rumbling roof. Tanya followed me.

  “I’ve been dreaming of romantic surroundings like this for a long time,” I said.

  A torn shoe lay under my foot. A sad grey cat was poised on the sharp ridge pole.

  I asked:

  “Have you ever been on a roof before?”

  “No, never,” replied Tanya.

  And added:

  “But I have always been terribly envious of Gagarin…”

  “There,” I said, “is the Kazan Cathedral… Behind it, the Admiralty… And this is the Pushkin Theatre…”

  We walked over to the railing. In the distance below, the evening city was abuzz. From above, the street seemed faceless and only the light-filled trams gave it a little life.

  “We need to find a way out of here,” I said.

  “Do you think the fight is over?”

  “I doubt it. How did you wind up here? With this set?”

  “Through my ex-husband.”

  “What is he, an artist?”

  “Not exactly… He turned out to be a lowlife. And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “How did you wind up here?”

  “Lobanov roped me into it. I bought a painting from him, out of snobbery. Something white… with ears… Like a squid… It’s called Vector of Calm… Are there talented painters among this lot?”

  “Yes. Tselkov, for example.”

  “Which one was he? The one in jeans?”

  “Tselkov is the one who didn’t show.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “One hanged himself not too long ago. His name was Fish. His nickname. He went and hanged himself.”

  “Dear God, why? Love affair gone bad?”

  “Fish was over thirty. His paintings didn’t sell.”

  “They were good paintings?”

  “Not really. He works as a proofreader now.”

  “Who?” I exclaimed.

  “Fish. They managed to save him. A neighbour stopped by for a cigarette.”

  “We need to find a way out.”

  Treading lightly, I made it to the small window in the attic. I threw it open and extended my hand to the young woman:

  “Be careful!”

  Tanya easily slipped through the opening. I followed after her. The attic was dark and dusty. We stepped over pipes wrapped in felt blankets and stooped to avoid clothes lines. We found the backstairs and walked down. Then navigated through the connecting courtyards and happened upon a taxi stand.

  It was raining and I thought: here it is, our Petersburg literary tradition. This much vaunted “school” is nothing more than endless descriptions of bad weather. The whole “dull lustre of its style” is just asphalt after the rain…

  Then I asked:

  “How are your mother and father? They must be worried.”

  For fifteen years I’ve been asking pretty women this stupid question. Three out of five say:

  “I live alone, so there’s no one to worry about.”

  And that is precisely what I want to hear. An old adage states: it is easier to fight a battle on enemy territory…

  “I have no parents,” glumly replied Tanya.

  I felt embarrassed.

  “I am sorry,” I said, “it was tactless.”

  “They live in Yalta,” she added. “Father is a local district committee secretary.”

  A taxi pulled up.

  “Where to?” asked the driver without turning around.

  “Dzerzhinsky Street, number 8.”

  The driver shrugged his shoulders in annoyance.

  “You could’ve walked.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll square up,” I said.

  The driver turned to me, punctuating every word:

  “My gratitude, kind sir! We shall never forget your generosity…”

  We drove up to Tanya’s building. Its brick façade protruded from the general rank by a few feet. Four wide Victorian windows were connected by a railing.

  The driver made a U-turn and left, saying:

  “Auf Wiedersehen…”

  The shallow steps led to a heavy, tarpaulin-covered door.

  I’d been in this situation a thousand times before and yet I felt nervous. Now she will walk up the steps and I’ll hear:

  “Thank you for seeing me home…”

  You must leave after this. To loiter about the entrance is unseemly. To ask for “a little nightcap” is contemptible!

  My friend Bernovich used to say:

  “It’s a good thing to go when you’re invited. It’s horrible when you’re not invited. But best of all is when you’re invited and you don’t go…”

  Tanya cracked open the door:

  “Thank you for the roof!”

  “You know,” I said, “what I feel bad about? There was a lot of alcohol left… Back at the studio…”

  And, as if unintentionally, I crossed the threshold.

  “I have wine,” said Tanya. “I hide it from my cousin. He shows up with a bottle and I sneak half of it into the cupboard. He has a bad liver…”

  “You’ve intrigued me,” I said.

  “I hear you,” said Tatyana. “I have an uncle who is a chronic alcoholic…”

  We entered the elevator. A small light blinked at every floor. Tanya was looking down at her sandals. An expensive pair, by the way, with the Rochas label…

  I could see an obscenity scrawled in chalk behind her. An insult without an addressee. Expression of pure art…

  Then we tiptoed very quietly, almost furtively, down the corridor. My sleeves swished against the wallpaper.

  “You are huge,” whispered Tanya.

  “And you,” I said, “are observant.”

  We found ourselves in a surprisingly large room. I saw a clay head of Nefertiti,* a foreign wall calendar with a woman in a pink brassiere and a poster for a transatlantic airline. Balls of wool glowed scarlet on top of the desk…


  Tanya produced a bottle of dessert wine, an apple, halva and some curled-up sweaty cheese. I asked:

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the Leningrad Engineering Institute, in the administration office. And you?”

  “I’m a reporter,” I said.

  “A journalist?”

  “No, a reporter. Journalism is style, ideas, problems… A reporter reports facts. A reporter’s primary goal is not to lie. That is the essence of his job. For a reporter, the epitome of style is silence. It contains the fewest lies.”

  The conversation was becoming serious.

  I generally preferred not to talk about my literary affairs. In this sense, I was keeping my so-called innocence. By gently putting down my work I was achieving the opposite effect. At least so I thought…

  The wine had been drunk, the apple was cut into pieces. There was a pause, which in a situation like this could be fatal…

  As strange as it may seem, I was feeling something like love.

  Where did it come from? From what pile of garbage? From what depths of this wretched, miserable life? In what empty, barren soil do these exotic flowers bloom? Under the rays of which sun?

  Some art studios full of junk, vulgarly dressed young ladies… Guitar, vodka, pathetic dissidence… And suddenly – dear God! – love…

  How wonderfully indiscriminate He is, this king of the universe!

  And then Tanya said, so quietly I could barely hear:

  “Let’s talk, just talk…”

  A few minutes earlier I had taken off my shoes without Tanya noticing.

  “In theory,” I said, “it’s possible. In practice – not really.”

  Meanwhile, I was silently cursing the broken zipper on my sweater…

  A thousand times I will fall into this pit. And a thousand times I will die from fear.

  The only solace is that this fear lasts less than a smoke.

  Then it was cramped, and there were words that were painful to think about in the morning. But most importantly there was a morning as such, and shapes were coming into focus as they floated from out of the darkness. A morning without disappointment, which I expected and dreaded.

  I remember I even said:

  “And morning looks good on you…”

  She was plainly more beautiful without make-up.

  And that’s how it all began. And lasted ten years. Just short of ten years…

  I began to drop by Tanya’s place from time to time. For a week I’d work from morning till night. Then, I’d visit some friend. We’d sit around, talk about Nabokov, about Joyce, about hockey and black terriers…

  Sometimes I’d get drunk and then I’d call her.

  “It’s a mystery!” I’d yell into the receiver. “An honest-to-God mystery… I happen to call and each time you say it’s already two in the morning…”

  Later I would stumble to her house. It visibly jutted out against the rest, as if taking a step towards me.

  Tanya continued to surprise me with her silent compliance. I didn’t know what it was a reflection of – indifference, humility or pride.

  She did not ask:

  “When will you come over?”

  Or:

  “Why haven’t you phoned?”

  She amazed me with her unfaltering readiness for love, conversation, fun. As well as with her complete lack of any kind of initiative in this respect…

  She was quiet and calm. Quiet without tension and calm without intimidation. This was the quiet calm of the ocean, indifferent to the cries of seagulls…

  Like most frivolous men, I wasn’t a very malicious person. I’d begin to repent or make jokes. I would say:

  “Suitors can be in-patients or out-patients. I, for instance, am an out-patient…”

  And then:

  “What do you see in me? You should find yourself a good man! Someone in the armed services…”

  “The incentive isn’t there,” said Tanya. “It’s not exciting to love a good man…”

  What interesting times we live in. “A good man” sounds like an insult to us. “But he is a good man” is said about a suitor who is clearly an insignificant nobody…

  A year had passed. I dropped in on Tanya more and more frequently. Her neighbours greeted me politely and took messages for me.

  I began keeping some personal belongings there. A toothbrush in a ceramic cup, an ashtray and slippers. One day I fastened a photograph of Saul Bellow over the desk.

  “Belov?” asked Tanya. “From Novy Mir?”

  “The very same,” I said.

  Very well, I thought, why not marry? Marry out of a sense of duty. Perhaps it’ll all work out fine. And for both us.

  For all intents and purposes we are married and it’s going well.

  A union divested of obligations. This being the guarantee of its longevity…

  But what about love? What about jealousy and sleepless nights? What about the overflow of feelings? What about unsent letters with blurry ink? What about swooning at the sight of a tiny foot? What about Cupid and Amor and various other extras in this captivating show? And for that matter, what about the bouquet of flowers for a rouble thirty?

  To be honest, I don’t even know what love is. I am wholly without criteria. Tragic love – that I understand. But what if everything is fine? I find that disquieting. There must be a catch to this sense of normality. And yet what’s even more frightening is chaos…

  Let’s say we make it official. But wouldn’t that be amoral? Since morality will not tolerate any pressure…

  Morality must flow out of our nature organically. How does it go in Shakespeare: “Thou, nature, art my goddess.”*

  Then again, who said it? Edmund! A rare kind of scoundrel…

  So everything is getting terribly confused.

  Nonetheless, a question remains: who would dare accuse a hawk or wolf of being amoral? Who would call amoral a marsh, a blizzard or the desert heat?

  An imposed morality is a challenge to the forces of nature. In short, if I do marry out of a sense of duty, then it will be amoral…

  Once Tanya called me herself. Of her own volition. For someone like her, that was almost subversive.

  “Are you free?”

  “Unfortunately not,” I said. “I’ve got a teletype.”

  For about three years, I’d been turning down all unexpected invitations. The mysterious word “teletype” was supposed to sound convincing.

  “My cousin is here. I’ve always wanted you two to meet.”

  And why shouldn’t I meet a fellow drinker?

  In the evening, I went over to Tanya’s. I had a little for courage. Then a little more. At seven I rang her doorbell. And a minute later, after an awkward crush in the corridor, I saw her cousin.

  He had taken a seat in the way police officers, provocateurs and midnight guests do, with his side to the table.

  The lad looked strong.

  A brick-brown face towered over a wall of shoulders. Its dome was crowned with a brittle and dusty patch of last year’s grass. The stucco arches of his ears were swallowed up by the semi-darkness. The bastion of his wide solid forehead was missing embrasures. The gaping lips gloomed like a ravine. The flickering small swamps of his eyes, veiled by an icy cloud, questioned. The bottomless, cavernous mouth nurtured a threat.

  The cousin got up and extended his left hand like a battleship. I barely suppressed a cry when his steel vice gripped my hand.

  And then he collapsed onto a screeching chair. The granite millstones quivered. A short but crushing earthquake had turned the man’s face into ruins for a moment. Among which bloomed, only to die shortly thereafter, a pale-red blossom of a smile.

  The man introduced himself with importance:

  “Erich-Maria.”

  “Boris.” I smiled listlessly.

  “And now you have met,” said Tanya.

  Then she went to fuss about in the kitchen.

  I stayed silent, as if crushed by a heavy load. And felt
his eyes on me, cold and hard, like the barrel of a rifle.

  An iron hand came down on my shoulders. My flimsy jacket suddenly felt tight.

  I remember I burst out with something ridiculous. Something terribly polite.

  “You are forgetting yourself, maestro!”

  “Silence!” uttered the man sitting opposite me, menacingly.

  And then:

  “Why haven’t you married her, you son of a bitch? What are you waiting for, scumbag?”

  “If this is my conscience,” a thought flashed through my mind, “then it is rather unattractive.”

  I began to lose my sense of reality. The contours of the world blurred hopelessly. The cousin-structure reached for the wine with interest.

  I heard the tram rattle outside. I pulled at my elbows to straighten my jacket.

  Then I said, as authoritatively as I could:

  “Hey, cousin, please keep your hands to yourself! I’ve been planning to have a constructive discussion about marriage for some time. I have champagne in my briefcase. Give me a minute.”

  And with resolve I set the bottle on the smooth, polished table.

  This is how we got married.

  The cousin’s name was Edik Malinin, as I later found out, and he was a martial-arts instructor at a centre for deaf mutes.

  But that day I evidently drank too much. Even before I showed up at Tatyana’s. And must have imagined God knows what…

  We got married officially in June, just before setting off for the Riga seaside. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to stay in a hotel there.

  The years passed. I couldn’t get published. I was drinking more and more. And found more and more justifications for it.

  For long stretches of time, we lived on Tanya’s salary alone.

  Our marriage combined elements of extravagance and privation. Between us, we had two separate dwellings within five tram stops of each other. Tanya had about twenty-five square metres and I – two tiny cubbyholes, six and eight metres. Putting it grandly – a bedroom and a study.

  Some three years later we exchanged all that for a decent two-room apartment.