A Russian Story (12 page)

“I wanted to ask you something. The newspaper I brought you. Have you read it?”

Sure enough, a few days previously, on her way from school, Tanya had brought him a newspaper containing — just imagine! — an article on Nietzsche.

“Have a look! It’s about your philosopher! Read it — you’ll find it interesting!”

A banal little piece, just several hundred words. The editor-in-chief had decided to raise the intellectual level of his wretched publication about seeds and Colorado beetles by including an article on Friedrich Nietzsche. Apparently, the great German philosopher was not an acolyte of Hitler, as they referred to him in the USSR, but quite the opposite. And now Tanya had decided to call round to discuss this article with him. Perhaps to borrow something by the philosopher with the moustache; he had a Ukrainian-style moustache… “Like yours, actually.”

“Oh no, Tanya, mine isn’t like that.”

For some reason Tanya wore a bright lipstick, heavy mascara round her eyes and false eyelashes that were not very well applied. She had never come round after dark before. She had called in several times for lunch after the morning lessons. He had treated her to his fried potatoes. Tanya liked that. He said her parents had treated him to a meal, and now he was treating her. Once he even made her a Turkish coffee. That was on her last visit, when she brought that newspaper.

And now here she was, visiting him at nightfall. It was late autumn and the village was all in darkness quite early. There are no street-lamps lighting up Irivka. Everyone is asleep or watching television. But at his house there is this girl. She had come to tell him that she did not need his General’s house and she did not need to get married like Olya. But she wanted to “be his friend”. Nobody would find out about this visit to his house. In winter, when it is dark outside, they miss out on important items of news in the village. Tanya started fitfully sobbing and he gave her a drink of juice from a carton, because the tap water in Irivka is not drinkable. She says: “Believe it or not, here everybody watches
Santa Barbara
; even the school teachers discuss Eden and Cruz with the pupils during their lessons.” He takes Tanya into the sitting room, sits her down on the sofa and tells her she will soon be leaving school and she will be going away from this village to study in the town, where everybody watches
Santa Barbara
as well, but at least there is slightly more chance of finding something different. To his misfortune, he takes Tanya by the shoulders, gently, as he would a child. But Tanya takes this as a signal and embraces him round the neck.

He had been on his own for almost a year and he had long since recovered from the exhaustion of the preceding tempestuous years; his masculinity was demanding new transports of passion. It crossed his mind that if Olya offered herself to him he wouldn’t be able to resist, but as she approached her sixteenth birthday Tanya looked as if she was thirteen; could he treat a child like that? He was no paedophile; he liked mature heifers. But he had to comfort the child somehow:

“Tanya, my dear, you have everything ahead of you; remember what wise old Demyanivna told you?”

“When we went to see her together that time, she said something different!”

“What was it she said? She told me I would go abroad and nobody knew when I would return! You will meet a good lad before long! I’m just an old goat to you.”

“I don’t want to get married and I don’t want your house. But why don’t you want just to be with me anyway? Am I of no interest to you at all?” Tanya still had her arms around his shoulders, clutching convulsively at his shirt. Which soap had she seen that in?

“Tanya, do you want me to undo my trousers right now and get it all out?”

“Why are you saying such horrible things,” sobbed Tanya, astonished.

“Well, do you want me to
do
them then?”

“It’s love I want. Then it isn’t horrible. And I don’t have to get married.”

“It all comes to the same thing in the end, believe me… Tanya, what we are talking about isn’t right. Let me take you home!”

“You don’t have to go with me. There isn’t anything to be frightened of here in Irivka. I came to see you in good faith. I didn’t want anything from you. But you didn’t believe me. You thought I wanted to make you marry me, but I just wanted us to be friends.” With those last words, she wasn’t speaking, she was crying. Then she ran away, gripping in her hands the false eyelashes which had suddenly fallen off onto her cheeks. He stood for a long time in the cold out on the doorstep, staring at the impenetrable November darkness into which Tanya had disappeared.

For several days he was unable to get this episode out of his head. How was he supposed to behave, so as not to offend her? Of course, he could have made a woman of her, without making a mother of her too. She wasn’t repulsive to him by any means, but as he was well versed in such matters he knew from the outset what it would have led to, above all for her. This young girl wanted to be loved and she imagined that if I had started to remove her jumper she would have felt something extraordinary. Whatever you did then would be wrong, it would all be so traumatic. Lord preserve us from situations like this …

On the day of the winter equinox the final act of this rural drama was played out. The wind is howling and he is sitting in the warmth of his house. It hasn’t snowed yet, and there will not be a white New Year. He will see the New Year in here too. Where is that journey abroad that Demyanivna foretold for him? He doesn’t even want to go to America. He is fine here. It will be a shame to sell this house. He will miss it. He has found out what it is probably worth. He will not be able to afford to buy a flat in a decent part of Kyiv; there might just be enough for a two-room one on the outskirts. It would be good to have a flat in Kyiv and this house as well. But that will probably be impossible. He is already starting to miss Kyiv, and that is a good thing. It means he will soon be saying goodbye to this peaceful spot; a new phase of normal existence will begin. In Kyiv, he will definitely miss this house, though, with its spacious rooms and the stove which he has become so expert at heating the place with.

Recently, he had begun doing some good thinking again. Once again, unexpected episodes from his childhood and youth started coming back to him, and he made progress with his German. They say Nietzsche is authentic only in the original. He puts on a CD of Mahler’s Third Symphony and adjusts the volume. But the great Germans — Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler — don’t like their music to be treated as background sound. They like you to listen only to them. So he stops the CD and listens to the silence. It was not without good reason that his uncle wrote about the creaking of the floorboards. But did he know that was the restless Kobi walking about? The ancestors of the present-day residents of Irivka did something to the ancient sorcerers and now they do not know how to placate them. Perhaps poor Tanya came to save her village, so that an outsider would fall in love with her and she could fulfil some mission… How can some sort of paradise return to this Ukrainian village if total collapse reigns throughout the country? Wages and pensions unpaid, prices rising, hyper-inflation and economic collapse, Russian and American mass culture on the television screens, conscientious Ukrainians are emigrating, and the Ukrainian rural population drunkenly sings Russian songs. Lord, what chaotic nonsense fills his head! The worst of it is when you can’t free yourself from the words of others in your thoughts. This sort of chaos cannot give birth to a dancing star. Better put Mahler on again and try to shut the thoughts out.

There is a knock at the door. Not Tanya again, surely? I will have to invite her to listen to some music, classical music. She won’t cope with Mahler, but I’ve got Vivaldi. He goes to the door and on the threshold he sees Zoya Mykolayivna and Mykhailo Tykhonovych.

“Zhenia, my dear! We were getting worried that you weren’t going to open the door.”

“I was working on the seventh chapter of my dissertation.”

“The seventh now! Congratulations! You must come round to ours! We’re having a big celebration at home. Our girls are sixteen years old today. Olya has come from town. Tanya wants very much to see you too!”

“But I didn’t know anything about it. I haven’t even got a present!”

“We sent Tanya over on her way from school so she could invite you in good time. But she was embarrassed and didn’t come. She’s still just our little girl, you see.”

It is quite understandable that the girl did not come to invite him to her birthday party after what had taken place between them. But now her demented parents have come, the Singing Mother-in-Law and the Ukrainianised Russian from Pskov, Tykhonovych. They both speak at once, interrupting one another:

“Your friend Volodya is at our house too.”

“He wanted to come to invite you himself.”

“We’re here with the car, Zhenia. Get in, just come as you are.”

“No need for presents!”

“You are our best present!”

And here he is at the Marukhins’ — that’s their surname. The guests greet his arrival with applause and stop eating momentarily. In the house there are a lot of people, a lot of food and a lot of moonshine. There is nowhere to sit down; they all mingle, treading on one another’s toes. Volodya squeezes his hand firmly. Tanya, looking pale, smiles despondently. The village Cleopatra, Olya, is wearing a fluffy sweater with a plunging neckline and tight-fitting jeans. Incidentally, Tanya is wearing the same sweater, but over a shirt, so it does not have the same sexy effect. Besides, Tanya does not have her sister’s sumptuous breasts.

They pour him a drink. All the women teachers from Irivka secondary school have turned up to this idiotic party. The head teacher, Hanna Petrivna. She who brings the milk, holding a glass of white coconut liqueur; this is how she demonstrates her refinement, dissociating herself from moonshine while suggesting her association with milk. The Fruit and Vegetable Woman, carrying a large cucumber. When they clink glasses in a toast, she clinks with her cucumber. A saucy young woman flaunting her backside, supplying speck to the guests on little plates.

“What snacks do you take with your state vodka in town? Cheese? Salami? Salmon? Here in the village it’s always
sallow,
nothing else!
Sallow, sallow, sallow
 — she pronounces
salo
, the Ukrainian word for
speck,
with an English accent. They explain to Eugene that this is Angela, the Englishwoman they decided to keep on at Irivka School, despite the abortion.

At this idiotic gathering he stood there dressed just as he had jumped into the car. He had just grabbed his jacket and put on his boots, so his feet were boiling now. But he hadn’t brought a coat, because they said they would take him back as well. That’s what you get when you don’t know how to refuse. That must be why he
can’t arrange everything as was ordained
, as wise Demyanivna had told him. The Singing Mother-in-Law calls for silence, as Eugene Onegin is about to propose a toast.

“To the good health of the Larin sisters!” he declares. Everyone claps as if he has uttered some pearl of wisdom. The idiots! This Ukraine of ours puts up with such as these…

His eyes meet Tanya’s unhappy gaze. She seems to be thinking the same as he is, except that she certainly lacks the appropriate vocabulary to describe this rave-up and its participants. After all, he can’t find the words for it either. There amongst the crowd he spots Olya. She winks at him. Then she motions to him to go outside. He follows. They go out into the garden. The December wind howls, but after the stifling atmosphere indoors he does not feel the cold and actually he feels fine. Olya’s eyes, made up like Cleopatra’s, are shining in the darkness. Unlike her sister, she knows how to apply make-up. She is not wearing a coat, only the fluffy sweater with the plunging neckline; he wants to feel her there, but Olya doesn’t let him; smiling enigmatically, she leads him off somewhere. He reaches for her allurements, but she runs off — what a little tease! If she lures him round the garden like this, he will get into her knickers just as any young lad would do. But Olya stops and, turning her back to him, audaciously drops her tight jeans, presenting him with her bare backside. The light from the lamp-post lit up in honour of the celebrations is reflected on her youthful, healthy skin. On her left buttock there is a butterfly tattoo. Evidently, Olya wanted to show him this stunner to let him know she had been in town for over a year now, so unlike her clever sister she was not a village girl and she was familiar with all kinds of wondrous ways.

But he is not to taste the fruits of paradise! He is knocked to the ground, he is being stifled, and Olya is screaming. Did she pull up her jeans herself? He hadn’t even unfastened his own. He struggles to free himself from Volodya’s powerful grip, but it isn’t easy. The young doctor breathes moonshine in his face and he is gripping his throat with the clear intention of strangling him. But Volodya is not a very good fighter; he is much better at healing wounds. So Eugene manages to break free of Volodya’s grasp and get to his feet. When he subsequently recalled these moments, which had changed his life for ever, he recognised that for some reason he had started to self-reflect, which was foolish in that situation. It was then that he recalled the fight between Lada and Halya, when he had been unable to separate them because they wanted to exclude him from their game by every possible means. But here in the rural environment the patriarchal paradigm applies: men fight. Even though the action was taking place in the village of Irivka, where the women dominated the men. It would have been more logical to thrash the little bitch Olya. However, Volodya attacks him, the friend who knew the secret about him and Olya, though hardly anybody in Irivka had found out about it yet. Men’s fights also end more seriously than women’s squabbles. Volodya wants to knock him down again, but although he fortunately managed to get up once, Eugene knows he might not succeed a second time. So he pushes Volodya away, to stop him attacking him once more. Volodya falls backwards, hitting his head on the barn steps. Volodya is motionless; there is blood around his mouth and neck. Eugene is dumbstruck.