Calligraphy Lesson (14 page)

Maybe it was animal instinct? The male's place within the herd does determine the survival of his offspring. The most cruel and devious ones become the leaders and wield the power, so their children have a better chance of survival. Women want to bear the children of leaders, of alpha-males who give them and their offspring protection. Maybe that's it?

Or maybe everything is simpler: a woman doesn't fall in love with a criminal, but with a man, with the vitality and strength he exudes. She falls in love with his force of life.

At dessert Kovalev declared, “How can you live here? It's so boring! Are you even living here? You're just rotting away!”

I was eating on his dime and had to agree with everything.

“Here, in the West,” he said, chewing with pleasure, “people are so miserly, putting everything off until tomorrow. But back home in Russia, people are greedy with life. Because if you don't take something from life right now, tomorrow there might not be anything left!”

He did everything greedily—ate greedily, laughed greedily, sucked the air coming off the lake greedily into his nostrils. He even took photographs greedily. Nothing was enough for him.

But more than anything, Kovalev loved taking pictures with his daughter. It seemed like he sincerely loved her a lot. He called her “bunny,” which was distasteful for me because that's what we called our son—“bunny.”

That night I tossed and turned in my bed at the train station hotel. I couldn't sleep out of self-hatred. Was I really jealous of this guy? Why was he the one staying in Nabokov's room and not me? I'm the one who loves Nabokov. I'm the one who was saved by his books, banned long ago in our homeland. For some reason I had always thought that if I were able to touch that sacred inkblot, I would understand something very important, very deep. And now I had touched it—and what did I understand? What was the revelation?

I lay there, listening to the occasional late train pass, and the same miserable thoughts kept crawling into my head: why can Kovalev afford to spoil his wife and daughter while I have to play lackey to his rich family, just so I can get some money for my son's and wife's presents from this impossibly smug guy? Who is he? How did he get his money? Was he a better student than I was at the Institute? In that late Soviet era life, when you could make the choice between a small debasement—to be quiet—and a large one—to give speeches—he voluntary chose the large one. In any country, at any time, there is always a minimum level of immorality necessary to survive. But it's possible to stop at that level. Though maybe it's not, if you actually want to accomplish something in this life. I was certain that in the new epoch he was still choosing the larger debasement, disgrace, dishonor, in order to get even richer. I suddenly imagined that tomorrow morning I would tell him all of this
right to his face and then leave. And only then did I fall asleep.

But the next day I drove them on an excursion to Chillon castle and was friendly, talkative, and attentive. I was gathering material for my
Russian Switzerland
and probably made a pretty good guide—I told them all about the Russian crowd in Chillon, sprinkling in amusing quotations.

I couldn't stand myself, but I knew why I was doing it.

Russians are familiar with a particular kind of conversation: train talk. Strangers meet each other in a train car and spend a day, two days, three days in a cramped compartment together. And then they part forever. You might spill out your soul to a random traveling companion, tell him things that you'd never tell friends in your daily life. On that evening, our last evening together, we had one of those train talks.

Alina went to put her daughter to sleep, while Kovalev and I sat at the hotel bar, and he ordered a bottle of the most expensive cognac. It was unlikely that Kovalev was interested in me as a conversational companion; he probably just needed a witness to the causal manner in which he ordered the bottle, which cost the average monthly salary of a cashier at Migros Supermarket.

We drank. The cognac was actually outstanding.

I remember I told him a funny story about how Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn, two giants of Russian literature, never met in the Montreux Palace Hotel. They wrote to each other and agreed to meet: Nabokov wrote in his daybook: “6 October, 11:00 Solzhenitsyn and wife.” Apparently Solzhenitsyn was waiting for a letter confirming the date. He came to Montreux with his wife Natalia, walked up to the hotel, but decided to drive on, thinking that Nabokov was either sick or for some reason didn't want to see them. Meanwhile, the Nabokovs waited for their guests at the restaurant for an entire hour—without ordering lunch—not understanding why they weren't showing up. After that, they never ended up meeting.

Kovalev shrugged his shoulders. I guess he didn't think the story was funny.

Then we drank some more, and he suddenly smiled crookedly.

“I thought your face looked familiar right away, but I just couldn't remember where I had seen you. Have we bumped into each other before?”

I assured him that, no, we hadn't.

Alina called and said that she would stay in with Yanochka.

Kovalev started asking me about how I ended up in Switzerland, about my Swiss wife.

“Aren't you bored among all these flowers and chocolates?”

He drank more than I did and quickly began to get drunk. Out of nowhere he started telling me about how his first wife was a bitch and how happy he was when they divorced.

“I came out of the courthouse and felt like I was flying! I swore I would never get married again. I kept my word for five years and then Alinka came along! I love my Alinka like a madman! How could you not love a woman like that? Have you seen her body? Tell me, have you?”

He had a revolting habit of slapping his companion first on the knee, then on the shoulder.

“And I love my Yanochka so much that I'd do anything for her! You believe me?”

I kept nodding my head the whole time. That was enough for him.

We sat there for a long time. In any case, one bottle wasn't enough and he started ordering himself more shots.

Kovalev told me something muffled and unclear about his business, about the criminals he had to deal with, about how disgusting it was for him to take part in all this filth, and how he was doing it all only for Alina and Yanochka.

“See,” he yelled so loudly that everyone in the bar kept turning around
to look at us, “I don't have anything on this earth as dear as Yanochka! I'd kill anybody for her sake! If he so much as touches her with one finger! I'll do everything for her! I'll become a murderer myself! I'll stuff my face with shit! I'd do everything for her, for my bunny! Got it?”

And then he whispered confidingly in my ear that he had ensured a future in Switzerland for his wife and daughter in case something were to happen to him.

“You never know,” he explained. “Anything could happen. But I did everything so that Yanochka can grow up here. Among all the flowers and chocolates! I've fixed it so that everything's provided!”

When he was totally wasted, he started to confess that his enemies were out to kill him.

“See, I'm already a marked man! And I know it! And I know who!”

I think he didn't really understand where he was and who he was talking to. He drunkenly growled, “But I won't let them get me! I'll hang onto life by my teeth, see? By my teeth!”

We left the bar and went outside to get some fresh air down by the lake.

We stood on the waterfront. We couldn't see the mountains in the fog and it felt like we were standing at the edge of a great sea.

Kovalev yelled out to the whole Lake Leman in the night.

“You think they marked me alone for death? No, they marked all of us! All! And you too, understand? No, you don't understand shit! You have to live now! Maybe this lake won't even be here tomorrow!”

I smirked. “So where's it going to go?”

He waved me away with his arm. “You didn't fucking understand anything!” and trudged back to the hotel on unsteady legs.

But I spent some more time walking along the waterfront. I felt like I was drunk, like I was talking to myself. The rare passersby turned to look at me. I told myself, “What if something happens to you? He ensured a life for
his wife and child—you didn't. You despise him, but how are you any better than he is?”

And then I felt very sharply that the lake might not in fact exist tomorrow.

The next morning, we said our goodbyes. Kovalev seemed crumpled. His eyes were red and glazed. He looked at me strangely, with a heavy and unpleasant stare.

“Yesterday I might've blabbed a little too much—forget it! Got it?”

I nodded.

The tip I got from Kovalev was fit for a king. In a good movie I would leave his money on the table and proudly walk out. But we were not in a movie.

Alina and I said goodbye almost like friends, and Yanochka just hung on to me and wouldn't let go.

We didn't see each other after that.

On her birthday, my wife unwrapped the boxes of presents. I badly needed to hear her laugh happily, to see how our son smiled from his bed.

Having your loved ones near you is the only important thing, and everything else has little meaning.

One morning a couple of months later I sat down at my computer and on the Yandex newsfeed I stumbled upon a familiar last name. Kovalev, one of the executives of a well-known bank, had been shot to death on the street right in front of his building. Just a typical news story for Moscow at that time.

The killer had waited for the victim next to the entrance lobby and fired an extra shot at his head to be safe—the neighbors saw this from their windows.

I don't know what happened to his wife and daughter. So many years have passed. Yanochka has to be so grown up by now. I wonder what
she's like today. Who did she become? What happened to her life after the death of her father? She must have grown up somewhere around here, in Switzerland.

What if you're here now, reading this, Yanochka? The strangest things can happen in life…

I wonder what you have left in your memory about our trip? Maybe everything's been erased, besides the pony? How's Pinga doing? He's probably long gone by now.

And what do you remember about your father?

He would've explained to you himself about our Institute, and about everything else. And about why he was killed.

Or maybe he wouldn't have.

You know, the only important thing is that there was a person for whom you were the most important being in world. Everything else is inconsequential.

Tell me, do you remember that inkblot?

Translated by Mariya Bashkatova

Of Saucepans and Star-Showers

 

All winter long I fantasized about spending the summer in Valais and roaming the mountains every day. I pored over the map and plotted out various routes. I'd be mountain-bound bright and early and homeward-bound come evening, tired and happy after a full day's ramble.

But then summer came, and I landed up in hospital with a bilateral hernia. There was no escaping postoperative complications, either—inflammation, high fever, antibiotics. As soon as my stitches were out I went off to Brentschen. But I had to kiss goodbye to all my wonderful plans. No hours-long hikes in the mountains. The first few days I ventured only as far as the table on the lawn in front of the chalet. I gazed at the Weisshorn and rejoiced at life.

The mountains in this vicinity have inspired so many descriptions that they seemed like quotations emerging suddenly from beyond the clouds.

I thought, too, about how, as the years go by, taking genuine delight in something becomes possible only when you can share that delight with somebody else. My son had promised to come and visit for a couple of days, and, watching the Rhône valley change colour in the twilight, almost as if it were pulling on a lilac stocking, I so wished I could enjoy this spectacle in his company rather than alone.

But he could never seem to find the time to come.

As I waited for his visit, I gradually started getting out and about,
venturing further and further from the village each day, now taking the level road towards Jeizinen, now the mountain track in the direction of Leukerbad, and every time I imagined how we'd stroll around these parts together. I walked at a leisurely pace, often stopping. The stitches itched unbearably—I wanted to pick the plaster off and tear at the scars with my nails.

Then my son emailed to let me know he was already on his way. His short message ended with the following riddle: imagine a saucepan big enough to hold anything you like—a chicken, a whole bull, a house, the entire Earth, even the entire universe. Yet what can such a saucepan never hold?

Let me explain. The thing is, his mother and I divorced when he was seven. I became a pop-in father. And, later, a fly-in father. Things were probably better that way, for everybody and for him first and foremost. When his mother and I fought—undignifiedly, inanely, smashing crockery and slamming doors—he didn't cry, just threw himself now at her, now at me, his hands clenched into little fists. Living like this was impossible. My leaving home did us—my son and myself—a world of good. Had we continued to live together, I would have only shouted at him: put your shoes away! Or, Do your homework! Or, Stop badgering me, can't you see I'm writing! But because I'd left, our get-togethers throughout his childhood were about him and for him only, and I never told him to stop badgering me. Not a single time. It was worth leaving home for that alone.