A Russian Story (10 page)

In the evenings the rain pelted down especially meaningfully, carrying messages which he thought he could begin to decode if he shut all everyday matters out of his head. Suddenly, he began to re-live a forgotten, quite unremarkable time in his life, when as a little eight or nine year old lad he had been taken by his father and mother to a holiday hotel in the Kyiv region, where it had started to rain just like now.

“We’ve come for a holiday!” said his mother, laughing. “To go down to the river and bask in the sunshine!”

They didn’t go back home; they ran to the dining room through the rain and spent the rest of the time in their room, listening to the sound made by the rain. His mother read some book and hardly talked to him, for which he felt belatedly grateful to her now as he recalled those days, because it was then that he first began thinking about the meaning of existence. Thinking pleasurably, almost going into a trance as he contemplated why it was pouring with rain and why he was so unexpectedly enjoying the view from their room of the wet wild vines entwining the shabby veranda of the adjoining hotel building. Now he had a view of the door to the store-room, entwined with wild vines. Only now did he notice the peculiar architecture of this edifice, which he had been looking out onto from the window for ages. What a strange gable end that was, surmounting the metal-framed doorway to the premises where he kept the potatoes!

In the evening, in spite of the incessant rain, Volodya turned up. At first, Eugene was not pleased to see his visitor, because he was just getting engrossed in
Ecce homo
. But he could not send the young doctor back home in the rain. He knew Volodya lived with his sick mother in a small house at the opposite end of the village, near the family of the Singing Mother-in-Law. So he invited him into the living room and, as usual, he took out a bottle of cognac and some chocolate. Why has he come to see me when it’s raining so hard? Was he missing our evening discussions?

After the first glass, Eugene felt at ease with Volodya again. The young doctor decided the time had come to reveal to the General’s heir the whole truth about the house he was living in. More precisely, to acquaint him with the versions of it which were current in Irivka. According to one of the versions, this house brought misfortune, according to another it initiated paranormal phenomena, which did not portend happiness either.

To begin with, apparently nobody knew who built this house or when, and the documentation had not survived. But this was not surprising, since on this very geographical eminence was the site of the sorcerers’ sabbath where the Kobi assembled. In this very place stood their tent, beneath which they boiled their herbs in a large cauldron. The Iri were afraid of the Kobi, although the latter had never done the former any harm. They did not associate with one another, but one day a girl from the Iri fell in love with a Kobi boy. Then the Iri cunningly deceived the Kobi and chased them away. Or, as they also tell, while the wedding of the Iri girl with the Kobi boy was taking place, the Iri took the magic Kobi cauldron and hauled it off to the place where Kobivka is now. It is in a depression, a damp place where it’s difficult to build…

“So the Kobi are sorcerers. But who are the Iri?”

“The Iri are the inhabitants of Iria, in other words paradise, as they used to call it.”

“So Irivka is a place of paradise then?”

“Yes, something like that. But when the Iri chased the Kobi away there was no longer a paradise in Iria. It became Irivka, not Iria any longer.”

“What an original version of the banishment from paradise! Tell me more, Volodya. Why didn’t you speak of this before?”

“Well, I was afraid I would scare you.”

“But I would like to know. Tell me more!”

“They say the Iri castrated this Kobi, who… well, you know.”

“But why?”

“So he would keep away from what wasn’t his.”

“You mean for ideological reasons?”

“It is also said that all the Kobi were castrated…”

“But that would have been difficult in practice!”

“Then how do you explain the fact that all the boys in Irivka keep wetting their pants until they go to school? This is not the case in Kobivka. That’s why the children at Irivka nursery school are all girls!”

After the Kobi were driven out, according to folk tradition, Iria ceased to exist. The crops failed and pestilence struck the cattle and the Iri themselves. Then the Iri started calling the Kobi back again. They replied that it was no longer in their power to restore paradise to Iria, and that an outsider would have to come and settle on the site of the Kobi sorcerers’ sabbath and fall in love with an Iri girl or a Kobi girl. Then he would acquire the power of the former Kobi and paradise would return to Irivka.

Eugene had the feeling that the naïve
folklore
was not the main reason for Volodya’s visit when it was raining so hard. And he was right. That evening Volodya revealed his whole secret to him. Apparently, he had tender feelings for Olya, the nurse-to-be. He was troubled by the fact that the girl was so young, only fifteen, and he had imagined himself marrying someone older. But he had personally arranged for this child to attend the college of medicine, so they could work together. It is a very good thing when the village doctor and the nurse are married. They were not going out together yet, but in December they would be free to do so, when the girls would be sixteen.

Eugene was touched by Volodya’s confession and somewhat embarrassed by it, because of course in the village of the
honest uncle, beyond reproof
the classic story of Russian literature was continuing to unfold. Was such a set-up a harbinger of doom? The outsider Eugene in their village, the engagement of Olga, the dispute between Vladimir and Eugene, the duel… At first, Volodya did not grasp what he was talking about or what he meant by the duel. Eugene had to remind the young doctor at some length of the great cultural narrative which had slipped Volodya’s memory. Finally, Volodya understood.

“We were all given such ordinary names! When I was a medical student, there were eight Volodyas in our year and seven, no… Volodya began counting on his fingers … nine Olgas! And the lecturer in political economy was Oleksandr Sergiyovych, well, so what? Did that make him a Pushkin?”

“But Zoya Mykolayivna told us she purposely named the girls in honour of Pushkin’s Tatiana and Olga.”

“Yes, she tells everybody that! Four times a day!”

“The Singing Mother-in-Law…”

“What’s to be done about that now? We’ll have to get a place built. The one I live in with my mother is too small…”

The rain stopped and on the first sunny day Tanya came on her own, without Olya.

“I wonder if I could read one of the books you have here…”

“The kinds of books I have wouldn’t interest you, Tanya.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Well, just have a look for yourself,” he said, showing the girl to his desk in the study in the north wing. “Choose something. What would you like?”

Tanya looked at the two-volume sets of Nietzsche and Francis Bacon and at Kundera’s
Immortality
. Eugene knew that there existed child prodigies in the town who read something similar while they were still of school age. He was somewhat envious of them, because when he was a schoolboy he read and understood
The Red and the Black
and
The Catcher in the Rye
in the original; he read and re-read
The Master and Margarita
and much else besides, but when he was at school Nietzsche was just not around! He wondered whether he would have coped with him then. Eugene knew, too, that sometimes there were clever boys and girls from the country at university in Kyiv, who also successfully absorbed all that. But this was not such a case. Tanya spent a long time looking at the books, then she said:

“I’ve brought you something to read too.”

“She took out of her shoulder bag a
Harlequin Pocket Book
from the
Great Passions
or
Enchanted Love
series, or something of the sort, and offered it to him. Oh dear!
She was fond of novels at an early age.
But of course in the classical Russian story they were novels by
Richardson
and
Rousseau
! Goodness knows who that Richardson was, but well, Rousseau is Rousseau. It seems the classical young lady read the great representative of the Enlightenment only for the narrative, but here it was some Nora Roberts or Bertrice Small. Lada reviewed this literature for girls with reading difficulties, pointing out that reading matter such as this not only reinforced their backwardness but encouraged them to accept traditional gender roles.

“Take it, go on!” insisted Tanya.

“I’ve read this, Tanya,” he said, lying uneasily.

Tanya then immediately wanted to discuss the book, which had made a big impression on her, with her older friend.

“Susan is brilliant, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely brilliant,” agreed Eugene. “To do something like that!”

“What was it she did?” asked Tanya craftily.

“What do you mean? She made Robert marry her!”

“Oh no, it wasn’t like that at all! You haven’t read this book! Here, read it, go on! You’ll find it very worthwhile!”

This upset Eugene. The importunate behaviour of the naïve Tanya mirrored the manners of the older Irivka women, constantly doing their utmost to get him to drink their disgusting milk, so he replied a little sharply:

“My dear Tanya, I’m very busy! I’m writing a dissertation. I haven’t got time for girlie books!”

“Oh, sorry, Mr Samarsky… I thought you would be interested to read how Susan graduated from the university and how only then George fell in love with her…”

Oh, I  see! It isn’t so simple! Even on the pages of harlequinesque novels new ideas turn up now! Tanya pulled such a sad face that he immediately sought to rectify the situation.

“Thank you, Tanya. Listen to me! Why do you address me formally? I’m like a school-teacher to you, aren’t I? But we’re friends, surely?”

Tanya’s child-like face remained extremely sad, and he simply couldn’t stand it. A radical solution was needed. He recalled what Volodya had recently told him about the Kobi and the Iri.

“Tanya, you said you and Olya went to Kobivka to have your fortunes told.”

“Yes,” said Tanya, a little more cheerfully. “Do you need yours telling too?”

“You see, Tanya, my wife and I are separated; she didn’t want to live with me. She had a son.”

“But isn’t he yours, Mr Samarsky?” Goodness — this child knows about him too.

“But nobody knows that for certain, do they! Tanya, I thought we agreed to be on informal terms.”

“Demyanivna can tell your fortune, Zhenia. If she agrees to see us, that is. She doesn’t take any payment.”

Eugene recalled the numerous posters in Kyiv during those years, aggressively summoning the people of Kyiv and visitors to the city to séances with fortune-tellers or folk healers who hired large concert halls to peddle their nonsense. He also recalled that a year or two ago on the Khreshchatik he had met an old acquaintance from his pre-Ukrainian life; she proudly explained that she was working as a fortune-teller and making good money, because people were stupid. Why not make money out of people’s stupidity? Isn’t Demyanivna a similar case? Well, why not take a walk over to neighbouring Kobivka, where he had never been yet? They say that genuine fortune-tellers and healers never take payment. However,
folklore
incorporates fundamental mythological structures. You just needed the skill to recognise them in the chaotic stories told by uneducated villagers. Many different layers of this mythology occur in the story of the Iri and the Kobi.

“Won’t you give me any of your books to read?” asked Tanya, interrupting his thoughts.

“Well, perhaps I should give you one of my uncle’s books?” Eugene took Tanya to his uncle’s wing, showed her the bookcase in the General’s study, and took Hemingway’s
Farewell to Arms
from its shelf. On his own desk remained the book from the harlequinesque series by an author whose name he had forgotten, though the title of her book stuck in his memory for a long time:
A Mid-Atlantic Encounter
.

Summer was drawing to a close. Tanya did not visit him. The Feast of the Transfiguration, Ukrainian Independence Day and the Feast of the Assumption came and went, and Tanya still hadn’t appeared, and the realisation caught up with Eugene that he hadn’t gone home for his warm autumn things because he was waiting for Tanya so as not to miss the opportunity to go to Kobivka to see Demyanivna the fortune-teller. He didn’t exactly spend days on end waiting for Tanya to turn up, but from time to time he did think of the child with a warm smile.

On the other hand, Olya called round twice. She brought him apples, different ones now, big red ones which were not as unusual to the taste as those she brought in July. Olya exclaimed:

“It’s rather untidy here! Come on, quick! Get the broom and sweep up the kitchen!”

“Yes, colonel!” He laughed, touching his temple with his right hand, imitating a military salute, but he didn’t take the broom; he didn’t even get up from the table, so Olya wouldn’t see his involuntary male interest in her. It was only Volodya who, being in love, thought of her as though she was still a child.

“Where did you get Tanya’s book from? Does she come to see you often?”

“She was here one day. We exchange books. Perhaps I could give you something to read too?”

“Oh, there’s no need, really! I wouldn’t advise you to read a lot either. It’s better to learn how to give injections.”

Tanya turned up on the last day of summer. She had brought back his
A Farewell to Arms
. She liked it a lot. She said she cried when Catherine was dying. Eugene wanted to ask her whether, since she liked this novel by Hemingway so much, which was commendable, she didn’t feel there was a difference between it and
A Mid-Atlantic Encounter
. But was it worth the effort to educate the intellectually hopeless Tanya? The girl added that she had also read
The Old Man and the Sea
. In English! They had read an adaptation during lessons at school.