Pushkin Hills

by Dovlatov, Sergei

  When she left, Tanya said, “And I…” The rest was drowned out by the drone of the motor…

  I looked in on Mikhail Ivanych. He wasn’t there. A shotgun glimmered above his dirty bed. A Tula-made, heavy double-barrelled gun with a reddish stock. I took down the gun and thought – isn’t it time for me to shoot myself?

  June turned out dry and clear, with grass rustling underfoot. Multicoloured towels hung off the tourist-centre balconies. The sturdy snap of tennis balls resounded. Bicycles with shiny rims glowed ruby along the wide porch railing. The sounds of an old tango carried through from the speaker above the attic window. The melody seemed traced over a dashed line…

  The snap of the balls, the smell of scorched earth and the geometry of the bicycles were the things I’ll remember about this unhappy June…

  I called Tanya twice. And each time it felt awkward. It felt like her life was following a rhythm different from my own. I felt silly, like a fan who’d jumped out onto a football field.

  There were strange voices in our apartment. Tanya would ask me unexpected questions. For instance:

  “Where do we keep electricity bills?”

  Or:

  “Would you mind if I sold my gold chain?”

  I didn’t even know that my wife owned anything valuable…

  Tanya ran from pillar to post filing documents. She complained about bureaucrats and bribe-takers.

  “I have in my bag,” she said, “ten bars of chocolate, four tickets to see Kobzon and three copies of Tsvetaeva’s poetry…”*

  Tanya seemed excited and almost happy.

  What could I say to her? Beg her for the tenth time, “Do not leave?”

  I felt humiliated by her absorption in her own affairs. What about me with my problems of an almost dissident?

  Tanya had no time for me. Finally something important was happening…

  Once she called me herself. Luckily I was at the tourist centre. At the library in the main building, actually. I had to run across the entire facility. It turned out Tanya needed a document giving her permission to take the child. Saying I had no material claims.

  Tanya dictated a few official phrases. I remember these words: “…a child in the amount of one…”

  “Have it notarized there and send it to me. That will be simplest.”

  “I can come to you,” I said.

  “Right now that’s not necessary.”

  There was a pause.

  “But will we have time to say goodbye?”

  “Of course. Please don’t think…”

  She was almost making excuses. She felt guilty because of her disregard. For her hasty “that’s not necessary”…

  Evidently, I’d become an agonizing problem that she had managed to solve. In other words, someone from her past. With all my vices and virtues. None of which mattered any more…

  That day I got drunk. Got myself a bottle of vodka and finished it all on my own.

  I didn’t want to invite Misha – conversations with him required too much effort. They reminded me of my university chats with Professor Likhachyov. Only with Likhachyov I made the effort to appear smarter and with this one, just the opposite – I tried to be as plain and simple as I could.

  For example, Mikhail Ivanych would ask:

  “You know why Jews have their knobs snipped? So their joysticks work better…”

  And I agreed, amiably:

  “I guess so… I suppose that’s what it is…”

  Anyway, I walked to the grove near the bathhouse and sat resting against a birch tree. I drank a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka on an empty stomach, chain-smoking and chewing on rowanberries.

  The world didn’t improve right away. At first I was disturbed by the mosquitoes. Some slimy thing kept trying to crawl up my leg. And the grass felt soggy.

  Eventually, everything changed. The woods parted, encircled me and welcomed me into their sultry bosom. For a time, I felt myself a harmonious part of the universal whole. The bitterness of the rowanberry seemed inseparable from the damp smell of the grass. The leaves overhead vibrated slightly from the buzzing of mosquitoes. The clouds floated by, as if on a TV screen, and even a spider’s web looked like a jewel.

  I felt ready to cry, though I still understood it was the alcohol’s doing. Evidently, harmony hides itself at the bottom of the bottle…

  I kept saying to myself:

  “Pushkin too had debts and an uneasy relationship with the government. Plus the trouble with his wife, not to mention his difficult temperament…

  “And so what? They opened a museum. Hired tour guides – forty of them. And each one loves Pushkin madly…

  “Where were you all before, I’d like to know? And who is the butt of your collective derision now?”

  I never got an answer to my questions. I fell asleep…

  When I woke up it was almost eight. Twigs and branches beamed black against the pale, ash-grey clouds. The insects came to life… The spider’s web touched my face…

  I got up, feeling the heaviness of my sticky clothes.

  My matches were damp. As was my money. But more importantly, there was very little of it left: six roubles. The thought of vodka loomed like a dark cloud…

  I didn’t want to go through the tourist centre. At this hour it was full of idling methodologists and tour guides. Any one of them might have started a serious conversation about the director of the Lyceum, Yegor Antonovich Englehardt.

  I had to walk around the tourist centre and make my way to the road through the woods.

  Cutting through the courtyard of the monastery also frightened me. The very atmosphere of a monastery is unbearable for a man with a hangover.

  And so I continued downhill along the route through the woods. More of a broken footpath, actually.

  It began to ease off a bit by the time I reached the Cavalier. Compared to local drunks, I looked like a prig.

  The door was held open with a rubber brick. On display in the hallway by the mirror was a ridiculous wooden sculpture – a creation of the retired Major Goldstein. The copper sign read: “Goldstein, Abraham Saulovich”. And below it, in quotes: “The Russian”.

  “The Russian” brought to mind both Mephistopheles and Baba Yaga.* The wooden helmet was painted silver with gouache.

  Eight people or so were crowding around the snack bar. Wrinkled roubles soundlessly landed on the counter. Coins jangled in the chipped saucer.

  Two or three groups were partying by the wall in the main room. They talked energetically with their hands, coughed and laughed. These were workers from the tourist centre, psychiatric-hospital orderlies and stable hands from the lumber mill.

  The local intelligentsia – a film projectionist, an art restorer and entertainment organizer – kept apart, at different tables. Facing the wall was a man I did not recognize, wearing a green polo shirt and domestically manufactured jeans. His ginger locks rested on his shoulders.

  It was my turn at the bar. I felt the familiar hangover shakes. Under the soggy jacket throbbed my weary, orphaned soul.

  I had to maximize my six roubles. They had to stretch as far as they would go.

  I ordered a bottle of fortified wine and two chocolates. I could get two more rounds like this and there would still be twenty copecks left over for cigarettes.

  I sat by the window. Now there was no rush.

  Outside two gypsies were unloading crates of bread from a car. A postman surged up the hill on his moped. Stray dogs were rolling around in the dirt.

  I got down to business. And made a positive mental note: my hands aren’t shaking. Which was good…

  The wine was spreading like good news, colouring the world with hues of kindness and compassion.

  Ahead of me lay divorce, debt and literary failure… But here are these mysterious gypsies with bread… Two dark-skinned old women near the polyclinic… A damp day cooling off… Wine, a free minute, my homeland…

  Through the general din I suddenly heard:

 
“This is Moscow! This is Moscow! You are listening to the Young Pioneers’ Dawn… At the microphone is the hirsute Yevstikheyev… His words sound like a commendable rebuff to the vultures from the Pentagon…”

  I looked around. This mysterious speech was coming from the fellow in the green polo shirt. He was still facing the wall. Even from behind you could see how drunk he was. His back, covered with rippling locks, expressed some sort of aggressive impatience. He was almost yelling:

  “And I say no! No to the overreaching imperialist beasts! No, echo the workers of the Ural paper mill… There is no happiness in life, my dear listeners! I say this to you as the last man standing of the 316th Rifle Division… Thus spoke Zarathustra…”

  People in the restaurant began to listen. Although without real interest.

  The guy raised his voice:

  “What are you staring at, you schlubs? You want to behold the death of a private in the Guards of the Maykop Artillery Regiment, Viscount de Bragelonne?* Allow me to grant you that chance… Comrade Rappoport, bring in the prisoner!”

  The other patrons reacted peaceably. Though “schlubs” was clearly meant for them.

  Someone from the corner said indifferently:

  “Valera’s a bit pickled…”

  Valera rose energetically:

  “The right to rest and recreation is guaranteed by the constitution… As in the finest houses of Paris and Brussels… Then why turn the sciences into a slave of theology? Live up to the agenda of the Twentieth Assembly of the Party! Listen to the Young Pioneers’ Dawn… Text brought to you by Gmyrya…”

  “Who?” someone asked from the corner.

  “Baron Kleinmichel, lovey!”

  Even at just a quick glance at the fellow I felt a sense of alarm. On closer inspection, this feeling intensified.

  Long-haired, ridiculous and scraggy, he gave the impression of someone feigning schizophrenia. But with the single-minded determination of being exposed as soon as possible.

  He could have passed for a lunatic were it not for his triumphant smile and expression of common everyday tomfoolery. A cunning, shrewd insolence was detectable in his crazy monologues. In this stomach-churning mixture of newspaper headlines, slogans and unfamiliar quotations…

  It all reminded me of a faulty loudspeaker. The man expressed himself sharply, spasmodically, with afflictive grandiloquence and a sort of dramatic vigour.

  He was drunk, but even in that one felt some cunning.

  I did not notice him come up. Only just now he sat there facing the wall. And suddenly he was looking over my shoulder:

  “Let’s get acquainted – Valery Markov! Habitual transgressor of the public peace…”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “I heard.”

  “I’ve been a guest at the big house. The diagnosis is chronic alcoholism!”

  I tilted the bottle in friendship. A glass materialized miraculously in his hand.

  “Much obliged,” he said. “I trust all this was bought at the price of moral degradation?”

  “Quit it,” I said. “Let’s drink instead.”

  In response I heard:

  “I thank you and I accede, like Shepilov…”*

  We finished the wine.

  “Honey on the wounds,” asserted Markov.

  “I have,” I said, “about four roubles. Beyond that, the outlook is foggy…”

  “Money is not a problem!” exclaimed my drinking companion.

  He jumped up and darted to his abandoned table. When he returned he was holding a crumpled black envelope for photo paper. A pile of money spilt onto the table. He winked and said:

  “You can’t count diamonds in caves of stone!”

  And further, with an unexpected shyness in his voice:

  “It doesn’t look good with the pockets bulging…”

  Markov patted his hips, in skin-tight jeans. His feet were shod in patent-leather concert slippers.

  What a character, I thought.

  Next thing I knew, he started sharing his problems with me:

  “I make a lot… The minute I’m off a bender, I’m rolling in dough… One snapshot – and I got a rouble… One morning – and there’s three tenners in my pocket… By nightfall I’ve made a hundred… And zero financial control… What am I to do?… Drink… We’ve got ourselves the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly* here. A day of work followed by a week of drink… For some, vodka is a celebration. For me, it’s hard reality. It’s either the drunk tank or the militia – it’s pure dissidence… Needless to say, the wife’s not happy. We need a cow, she says… Or a child… Provided you don’t drink. But for now I’m abstaining. In the sense that I still drink…”

  Markov stuffed the money back in the envelope. Two or three notes fell on the floor. He was too lazy to bend down. His aristocratic behaviour reminded me of Mikhail Ivanych.

  We walked up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Agdam. I reached out to pay. My companion raised his voice:

  “Hands off socialist Cuba!”

  And proudly threw three roubles on the bar.

  A Russian drunk is a fascinating creature. Even when he has money, he still prefers poison at a rouble forty. And he won’t take the change. I myself am the same…

  We returned to the window. The restaurant had filled up. Someone even started to play the accordion.

  “I recognize you, Mother Russia!” exclaimed Markov, and added, lowering his voice: “I hate it… I hate these Pskov buffoons! Beg your pardon, let’s have a drink first.”

  We had a drink. It was becoming noisier. The accordion was piercing the air.

  My new acquaintance was yelling excitedly:

  “Just look at this progressive humanity! At these dumb faces! At these shadows of forgotten ancestors!… I live here like a ray of light in the kingdom of darkness… If only the American militarists would enslave us! Maybe then we’d live like people, of the Czech variety…”

  He slammed his hand on the table:

  “I want freedom! I want abstractionism with dodecacophony!… Let me tell you…”

  He leant over and whispered hoarsely into my ear:

  “I’ll tell you like a friend… I had an idea – to get the hell out of here, and go anywhere. Even to Southern Rhodesia. As far away from our backwater as possible… But how? Our borders are bolted! From morning till night they’re under the watchful eye of Karatsupa…* Go overseas as a sailor – but the local council won’t let me… Marry some foreign tourist? Some ancient Greek slut? And where am I going to find her? This one character said they were letting out the Jews. And I said to my wife: ‘Vera, it’s our Cape of Good Hope…’

  “My wife is from the simple folk. She scoffed at me. ‘Your mug alone demands punitive action… They barely let your type into the movies and you want to go to Israel!’

  “But I had a chat with this guy. He suggested I marry a Jew for a short while. That’s much simpler. Foreign tourists are few and far between, but Jews – they do come across once in a while. There’s one at the tourist centre. Named Natella. She looks Jewish, only she’s fond of a tipple…”

  Markov lit up a cigarette, first ruining a few matches. I began to feel drunk. Agdam was spreading through my blood vessels. The shouts were merging into a measured, swelling din.

  My drinking companion was no drunker than before. And his madness seemed to have abated a little.

  Twice we went to the bar for more wine. Once some people took our seats. But Markov made a scene and they left.

  He shouted at their backs:

  “Hands off Vietnam and Cambodia! The border is locked! Karatsupa never sleeps! Persons of Jewish nationality excepted!”

  Our table was covered in candy wrappers. We flicked our ashes into a dirty saucer.

  Markov continued:

  “I used to think I’d make for Turkey in a kayak. And I even bought a map. But they’ll sink me, the scum… So that’s over. My past and thoughts, as they say… Now I’m counting more on the Jews… One time Natella and I were drinking b
y the river. And I said to her, ‘Let’s get married, the two of us.’ And she said, ‘You’re so savage, so scary. The black earth is raging inside you,’ she said… In these parts, by the way, no one’s heard of black earth. But I didn’t say anything. Even squeezed her a bit. And she started screaming, ‘Let go of me!’ I guess… So I said, ‘This is how our Slavic ancestors lived…’ Anyway, it didn’t work… Maybe I should have asked her nicely? Should have said, ‘You’re a person of Jewish nationality. Help out a Russian dissident, regarding Israel…’”

  Once again Markov took out his black envelope. I never got the chance to spend my four roubles…

  Now we were talking, interrupting one another. I told him about my troubles. To my chagrin, I discoursed on literature.

  Markov addressed the void:

  “Off with your hats, gentlemen! Before you sits a genius!”

  The fans chased clouds of tobacco smoke around the room. The sounds of the jukebox were drowned out by the drunken voices. Workers of the state lumber mill made a bonfire on a porcelain platter. Dogs wandered under the tables…

  Everything was beginning to blur before my eyes. I managed to catch only some random bits of what Markov was saying:

  “Forward to the West! Tanks moving in a diamond formation! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!”

  Then some intoxicated character with an accordion approached me. Its bellows blushed pink, intimately. Tears streamed down the accordion player’s cheeks. He asked:

  “Why’d they dock me six roubles? Why’d they take away my sick days?”

  “Take a swig, Tarasych.” Markov pushed the bottle towards him. “Drink and don’t be upset. Six roubles is nothing…”

  “Nothing?” suddenly the accordion player got angry. “People break their backs and for him it’s nothing! For six years these hands drudged away for nothing doing hard time… Article 92, without an instrument…”*

  In response, Markov trilled soulfully:

  “Stop shedding tears, girl! The rains will pass…”

  A second later, two lumber-mill stable hands were prying them apart. With a painful howl the accordion collided with the floor.