And Vova, the policeman, had replaced his two women with a German shepherd and been promoted to lieutenant.
IF A TREE FALLS IN A
SOLITARY FOREST
1
December is dark with vague sorrows and fears.
Dasha never knew her father. But in December she missed him as if she had. January was better. The afterglow of Christmas gave some warmth and the days were longer. By the end of February you were almost there. The snow clung in moist clumps to the seat of your wool pants or dangled from them in silvery wisps. When you made a snow ball — pat-pat-pat — and the snow drenched your mittens, you knew that spring was sending it first wink. “Where shall I hang my icicles next month? The balcony? The eaves? The downspout?”
But December is dark and dreary.
When Dasha was little, she didn’t notice her father’s absence. But later at school the other kids teased her. Had she grown up in the thirties or forties, she would have been like everyone else. By the fifties children had started to have fathers again.
“Where’s our father?” The seven-year-old had long held back the question always in her eyes, until one New Year’s Eve it suddenly tumbled out. It scared her, and she wanted to take it by the scruff of the neck the way she’d seen a stray cat grab its kittens to move them out of sight, but it was too late. The question was already staggering between Dasha and her mother. Her Mama glanced at her, lit a cigarette, and blew her hair off her forehead.
“Is our life so bad the way it is?”
No, it wasn’t. Dasha had her own nook with a cot, a little bookshelf, and a doll. On the floor next to the doll was a rusty pair of Eider ice skates. Not the white figure skates that every little girl dreams of, but boys’ hockey skates.
Dasha’s Mama slept in another, larger nook, where besides her bed there was a desk with a typewriter on it, along with some dried flowers in a green Borzhomi mineral-water bottle and a figurine of the goddess Diana holding a javelin in one hand and touching the back of a deer with the other. Hanging from the deer’s antlers were paper clips her Mama used in her work.
Boiled carrots for breakfast, boiled potatoes for dinner, and, for a Sunday treat, salt herring with sliced onion and sunflower oil. No, their life wasn’t bad. Once a month, Mama brought home an apple, but since neither of them would touch it first, it sat on its blue saucer until it shrivelled up.
Their warped old kitchen table reminded Dasha of an abandoned skiff she had once seen in a village lying upside down in tall grass far from any water, its bottom bleached bone white by the sun. When she peeled back the oilcloth covering the table, she could see a round indentation in one of the table’s corners.
“The previous owners must have had the bad habit of cracking walnuts there with a hammer,” her Mama said. “Why don’t you leave the oilcloth alone and finish your carrots?”
But the indentation intrigued Dasha. The fact that it was there even when she wasn’t looking at it was strange. Or even alarming. What was it doing when she was at school? And what about the trees that spent the whole winter all by themselves in the frozen ground? Or the bugs that lay hidden in little cracks in the earth? Or the rivers that flowed in solitude across far-away plains? She wanted them all to be with her continuously, all the time, since she somehow felt responsible for them. At other times, she thought it was probably all right not to see every thing every minute, since you could just think about them and that would keep them going. For example, the two black floral-shaped spots in the bottom of her bowl where the enamel was chipped. They would reappear as soon as she finished her carrots. The smaller one looked like a lily of the valley, while the larger one was shaped like a tulip.
Mama typed in an office all day and cleaned in a hospital at night. The long lonely evenings by their icy window were Dasha’s alone. The dead fly on the cotton wadding placed between the double panes for the winter would lie there on its back until April. Then Mama would untape the windows and remove the soot-blackened wadding, together with the fly.
Exactly at nine, Dasha would crawl into her mother’s bed and turn on the night light. To keep her fear at bay, she would put on her mother’s nightgown and then wait under the covers. From its depths the building would send up a friend, its ancient elevator. She and the elevator shared a secret language. Late into the night the elevator would speak to her with the clicks and clacks of its metal cage. As the elevator crept from floor to floor up to her own, the sounds naturally grew louder and more distinct. And then the elevator would play a cunning game with her as she held her breath: would it stop at her floor or continue on? The elevator had two doors, one that opened in halves to the inside, its shiny black surface covered with unintelligible graffiti, and another solid metal one that opened to the outside on each floor. “Guess who’s inside me?” Dasha would ask in a deep elevator voice. She could often tell who by the way her neighbours managed the elevator doors. The man who lived on the floor below threw them open with an impatient bang. But Dasha’s Mama passed through doors without a sound, as if somebody were watching. Dasha would count the up-and-down clicks, holding on to them as long as she could until she lost track and drifted off. And then she would scold herself in her sleep for having missed her Mama again.
The triple folded wool blanket Mama put under the East German Erika portable typewriter to muffle its tapping didn’t keep Dasha from waking up. (Mama often brought her work home.) But soon the clicking, which sounded like hail striking the roof, would lull her back to sleep.
From time to time the steady routine of their mother-daughter happiness was interrupted by mother’s mysterious ailments. Dasha drew the curtains, wrapped the hot-water bottle in a towel, and placed it on her mother’s forehead. Then they would lie next to each other in the dark, while Dasha kept watch to make sure Mama didn’t die in her sleep. When her Mama got better, Dasha would read her Pushkin’s fairytale about Tsar Saltan. Believing outrageous slander, the tsar orders his young wife and son to be sealed in a barrel and hurled into the sea. Inside the barrel, the boy grows into a strong youth, knocks out the bottom of the barrel, and saves his Mama and himself.
On ordinary days, they got up before dawn. The clothing on the chair was stiff and cold. Without turning on the light, Dasha’s Mama handed clean underwear to her in the warm cave of the bed, and then pulled Dasha’s listless body out from under the covers, drew her sleepy arms through the shoulder loops of the garter belt, and buttoned the five buttons in the back. Then she attached the suspender clips to Dasha’s stockings, two for each leg, one in back and the other in front. Dasha yelped at the sudden touch of the cold metal on her thighs. A splash of tap water in her face gave her a start, even though her Mama did hold it in the palm of her hand first to warm it. Dasha’s last efforts to remain asleep were completely routed by the bite of the metal comb in her hair.
“Why is your hair all matted again? I just combed it out yesterday?”
Dasha stifled her tears. Crying wasn’t allowed in their happy life.
Mother’s job started at eight on the other side of the city. Dasha’s school opened at nine. That meant they could leave no later than seven. Once they were on the trolley bus, her Mama stared out the window, her face impassive.
The schoolyard was dark and empty.
“Don’t sit on the bench. Your bladder could catch cold. Walk around or jump up and down to keep warm.”
Mama bent down, pressing her face so close that Dasha could see the dark specs in her grey irises with the yellowish rim around her pupils. Mama remained still for a moment, then deftly drew herself up and quickly left. Dasha wiped the moisture from her cheek with the back of her mitten and timidly looked around. The schoolyard was still dark and empty. There was a frozen puddle just beyond the metal fence that enclosed the playground. Noticing some twigs in an icy froth of ice, Dasha pushed her head through the railing and managed to get one leg through as well. A tap of her heel cracked th
e twigs’ icy tomb, which Dasha immediately regretted. Set free, the twigs lost their magic.
To warm and cheer herself up, Dasha hopped first on her left foot, then on her right, but the effort steamed up her glasses, so she abandoned it. Bored, she picked up a fallen ice-coated branch and used it to brush away the pillows of snow covering each bench. The flurries amused her. Then she arranged her thick mittens on the freshly cleaned surface of the bench so her bladder “wouldn’t catch cold” and sat down on them. The sky was getting lighter. When the first kids arrived, Dasha hid behind the Doric columns of the school portico. If they had seen that she had been waiting all alone in the schoolyard, she would have been a laughingstock: a neglected child, an outcast.
2
In March, when the shadows and days got longer, Mama said: “You’re a big girl now and can take the trolley bus to school by yourself. Ten minutes and you’re already there. You remember our stop?”
It was getting to the stop that was the tricky part. You had to cross a busy intersection with heavy trucks and streetcars making turns without slowing down. “It’s dangerous even for adults,” her Mama said. “You’ll have to ask some nice lady to help you cross. Always ask an auntie, never an uncle.”
To make sure Dasha followed her instructions, Mama took two days off and watched her after mingling with the crowd. Now they could leave home half an hour later, which meant an additional 15 minutes of sleep and no waiting in the schoolyard alone.
Dasha, however, had no intention of following her mother’s instructions to the letter. Nor was she going to ask only aunties.
“Could you please take me across, kind uncle?” she said, looking up at a stranger and quickly slipping her hand into his, so there would be no time for him to think or ask questions. But usually the men didn’t ask questions, nor did they change their quick gait or alter the sombre expression on their faces. Dasha instinctively tried to match her short stride to their long one, running and skipping by turns. She gave them a few minutes to get used to her, and though she was always ready with the most important question, she waited until they reached the streetcar track in the middle of the road.
“Do you have children, uncle?” If the answer was yes (by far the most frequent), Dasha would thank the stranger and run off to her stop.
But one man said no.
“Would you like to be my father? Please!”
The stranger looked searchingly at Dasha’s face. Then he turned and ran after a streetcar.
3
With April came spring. The first rooks held rowdy meetings in the tops of the still bare poplars. As promised, icicle troves appeared on the downspouts and balcony railings. The afternoon sun, a merry percussionist, knocked them down with a delicious crash. Dasha was now allowed to put away her coat and go to school in just her uniform. How lovely! Although her uniform with its brown dress and black apron wouldn’t attract anybody’s attention, her white cuffs and collar would be noticed, she hoped. After all, she had only learned the month before how to sew them on by herself.
For her birthday at the end of March, Mama gave her a pair of second-hand figure skates. She hadn’t been able to skate backwards on her old Eiders, but now she could learn all sorts of tricks on the elegantly curved wonder of the new blades. The ice in the yard had already become soft and porous, and gingerly attempting her first turn, she stumbled over a dry patch and fell hard on her back. Suddenly she didn’t feel like moving, and lay there staring at the sky, watching the blue patches gradually disappear as the clouds sailed across them. Looking at the vanishing blue, she understood why nobody had agreed to be her father. It was because she had been selfish and asked only for herself.
The next morning on her way to school, Dasha let several waves of people pour off the curb until at last she noticed a young man in a light sports jacket with a bright yellow scarf around his neck and a soccer ball tucked under his arm. While the dark, dense crowd waited for the light to change, she quickly sidled over to the man. He was whistling under his breath.
“Could you please help me across? My Mama won’t let me do it by myself.” The whistling stopped.
He ignored Dasha’s extended hand, but they crossed side by side. By the time they got to the tracks, Dasha had already calculated her chances as negligible, but she liked the man’s athletic figure and bright scarf.
“Do you have any children, uncle?” Dasha asked, deciding to try her luck anyway, since they had already crossed the tracks and were close to the other side of the street. The man stared at her. “Suppose I don’t. What business is that of yours?”
“My Mama and I need a father,” Dasha firmly replied.
“Your mother? Terrific! How old is your mother?”
“Twenty-nine,” Dasha said.
“Is your mother a blonde or a brunette?”
Dasha didn’t know what a brunette was and hesitated.
“My Mama is beautiful,” she finally said.
The man chuckled.
“Will your mama be home sometime tomorrow?” He took a tangerine out of his pocket. “Give this to your mama. Tell her I’ll come by Saturday around noon. We’ll take a look.”
And then he was on the move again and about to dissolve into the crowd. Dasha ran after him.
“Uncle, you forgot to ask for our address!”
The man turned around. He looked at her with curiosity.
“Your address? All right, go ahead.”
“Taganka 31, Apartment 6. It’s right across from the bakery. Will you remember, uncle?”
“Oh, I’ll remember, missy.”
He shook his head and bounced the ball hard twice on the sidewalk before disappearing into the crowd.
That night Dasha didn’t see her mother. She fell asleep with the tangerine in her hand and woke up late the next morning to an empty apartment. Her Mama worked the early morning shift at the hospital every second Saturday, which Dasha had forgotten. Now she feared the worst: that their Papa would arrive before her Mama got home. She climbed up on the windowsill, looked out into the street, got back down, fed the two goldfish in the bowl, and listened for her friend, the elevator, even if it mostly slept in the daytime and refused to speak, as if to ensure that the long dull day would drag on. Then she remembered the tangerine. She peeled it, meaning to leave half of it for her Mama but somehow popping the whole thing in her mouth, so that its tangy juice ran down her chin. And then the door bell rang.
Since her Mama always used her key, it sounded abrupt and alien. Dasha ran to the door, almost choking on the tangerine. Standing on a stool to look through the peephole, she saw yesterday’s man waiting outside with a bunch of red tulips in his hand. And then, just as she was opening the door, the elevator doors opened too, revealing first a net bag of groceries and then the hem of her mother’s coat.
“Are you looking for somebody?” Mama asked, coming over to their door and standing between it and the stranger.
“I’m looking for you,” the man said in a gentle baritone.
“There must be some mistake,” Dasha’s Mama brusquely replied.
“Whether it’s a mistake or not we’ll soon find out. Though something tells me it isn’t.” He eyed her appraisingly: “Let me help you with your groceries.”
Her Mama hesitated. The man looked straight into her eyes and smiled.
“How about a trade? I’ll give you these flowers and you’ll give me your bag. Fair?”
Mama blushed, blew her hair off her forehead, and finally took the tulips.
“But why? It’s not a holiday or anything.”
“Do I have to have an occasion to give a ravishing woman flowers? I’m Sergey, by the way. I teach phys. ed. What school does your daughter go to?” He nodded towards Dasha, who was watching from the doorway.
“No. 280.”
“See, we’re neighbours. I’m at No. 365, at the other end of
Taganka.”
“You don’t say. But what I’d really like to know is how you got my address!”
“A little birdie whispered in my ear: ‘Go you don’t know where, and find you don’t know what.’”
Sergey winked at Dasha, as if to say: “You didn’t warn your mother, but I promise I won’t tell.”
“Well, don’t trust your little birdie too much!” her Mama said playfully as she sniffed the flowers. “But why are we standing on the landing? Why don’t you come in?”
“Do you know how to keep tulips from drooping?” Sergey asked as he stepped inside and glanced around their little entryway.
“Sure, everybody does. Trim the stems before you put them in the water. The groceries go in the kitchen.”
“On the table?”
“Fine. Thanks.”
“I’ll give you a better one: put a copper coin in the water and your tulips will last all week.”
“I never heard that before,” Mama said, smiling for the first time as she sniffed the flowers.
“Here!” He took a coin from his pocket.
“Oh, please! I have my own,” her Mama said, waving his hand away.
“I’m not offering you a diamond, am I? So take it.”
He whistled lightly.
“You live here alone, just you and your daughter?”
“Yes, it’s just us,” her Mama said, sighing. “Go do your homework, Dasha.”
From the kitchen, Dasha heard the water running from the tap into the kettle, the clatter of tea cups, and, later on, bursts of laughter. Left out of the fun, Dasha crept from the main room and hid in the hallway behind the frosted glass door to the kitchen. She didn’t recognize her mother. She had let her long hair down, and her head was tossed back in a hearty laugh.
“Salami? Butter? Bratwurst? On a magic carpet? Stop it! Please stop it, Sergey, or I’ll split in two!”
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