Everything Happens as It Does (8 page)

30.
This Is What

 

Just when Mr. V. was ascending into the realms of slumber, Maria was spreading a white tablecloth in the house of Boris's parents. She had brought not only groceries, but also a cooked meal for dinner. The old woman, in turn, had baked a loaf of bread and had prepared stewed dried fruit, honey, and pickled vegetables. The old man was holding his grandson and the two of them were babbling joyfully to each other. There had just been a power outage and two gas lamps illuminated the small room, their light joined by the glow of the fire. They sat at the table, on which lay a variety of dishes as was custom. The baby was put in its basket. Maria looked at the tiny old man and woman, as if trying to capture them in the lens of a camera. In their little cottage, with their cat and dog, with their blue eyes and apple-pink cheeks, with their dark clothes and lilting voices. They were like something out of a picture; no, rather, they were a picture, a living one. The grandfather blessed the bread and named each piece as he broke it off—this one for the house, this one for the baby, this one for Boris, and so on, for each one of them.

 

31.
How Storms Rise

 

Fanny's kitchen was bustling with life. The spell was lifted from the appliances, pots and pans chittered on the hot stove, cabbage was being chopped on thick wooden boards and sprinkled with paprika, platters were being arranged with pickles and dips, glasses were being passed from hand to hand, drinks were being poured generously. All guests, feeling truly welcome, had an air of devotion, regardless if their work was contributing to the common good. Even Mr. V., gently snoring by the fire, was in a state of perfect happiness.

The music was pounding. Long forgotten lamps along the walls were lit again, their warm rays blending all rooms into one hall of light. Fanny walked back and forth, as if a guest in her own house, incredulous that a turn of fortune could have such dizzying dimensions. It made it seem worthwhile to have hibernated all this time. She felt amazed that the crowd of people could organize itself so efficiently, that the guests were singing and dancing and taking care of each other. She instinctively checked herself: thinking too much could bring back the iciness, so she spun on her heels and started running, waving a bridle of garlands with which someone had adorned her. Near the Christmas tree she saw the girl, Margarita, who had decorated it. Someone was holding her arm and whispering in her ear. Margarita was peering at a magnificent portrait by Ivan Lazarov as if she were about to dive into it.

The doorbell burst into song again; who was it this time? Someone opened the door before Fanny had time to decide whether to head in its direction. In a few seconds the wave washed a flustered young man to her side. She recognized Mr. V.'s chauffeur. She was confused for a moment—she had completely forgotten Mr. V. The young man's presence suddenly made her remember her mother and the host of laws and obligations that resurfaced every Christmas. Before she could do anything about it, the issue was merrily taken up by half a dozen people. Instead of showing him to the person corresponding to the description of Mr. V., they led the young man to the kitchen. It was too late to stop them. Fanny waved to him from a distance just before he disappeared. It crossed her mind that the chauffeur, who was familiar with the house and knew her well, probably felt like he was dreaming. Tonight, the world was upside down.

 

32.
And How They Taper Off

 

Philip, the father of the twins, was pacing back and forth like a panther in his small apartment. Christmas Eve was an especially difficult time for him. Numerous friends had invited him for dinner with their families, but all invitations had been declined with the made-up excuse of an engagement elsewhere. In the week before Christmas, he had tried repeatedly to get in touch with someone at his wife's house, but the phone had rung in vain. Now he was trying to resist the urge to go out, and only the hope of a call from one of the children, or Maria, stopped him. Why the hell hadn't he gotten an answering machine? He knew that, at the end of the day, he would leave the house and bury himself in one of his regular haunts.

He should have accepted one of the invitations, like he had done the year before. But he had decided not to for some unknown reason, and had thus painted himself into a corner. He could not understand why he felt such indomitable rage—which he knew to be the source of his misery. Yet, he was convinced that if he subdued his anger, if he became humble, he would be finished.

He downed another small glass of vodka and continued pacing his kitchen. A distant sound of inconsolable weeping always accompanied him, and after each moment of forgetfulness, Philip returned to his internal restraint, the stake next to which he lay like a chained dog.

Of course, he could “work on himself,” as his doctor used to say, words one would expect from a communist youth leader at a high school party meeting. But why work on himself, why try to become other? In order to feel better, was the inevitable answer. At times he felt like he was crawling, squeezing his shoulders through a tunnel too narrow to turn back. It's possible to go back, everyone said, but Philip didn't want to. He wanted to have it all, now and here. He wanted Maria, he wanted his children, he wanted himself with his children and Maria. He could picture himself being with them. Whenever he fell into drunken reveries—the only moments the emptiness around him became animated—he surrendered to such dreams.

He banged the glass on the kitchen counter with sudden determination, grabbed his coat on his way to the door, and rushed to the car waiting faithfully for him downstairs.

 

33.
Revolution and the Head

 

Mr. V. stirred and felt that he was barefoot. Pleasant warmth was coming from the fire and he opened one eye. There they were, his pink feet heated by the flames. Someone had taken off his shoes and socks, and Mr. V. realized that he had been sound asleep. The lights were out and the door was closed. He was probably alone in the room. He could hear steps and voices and music on the other side. The smell of delicious things awoke his senses.

His next thought made him jump. Madame, Christmas Eve, and everything else. He gave a snort that sounded like a perfect imitation of a horse, a liberty he took only when he was alone.

But then he noticed that he was not alone. He could feel a presence by the massive desk in the corner. He turned toward the noise and made out a dim shape on the desk. The thing was alive and getting to its feet. A cat, Mr. V. guessed. Pavoné, Fanny's cat, Fanny's notorious, misanthropic cat.

The creature had fixed its glimmering eyes on him and was slowly rising, which made Mr. V. very uneasy. His bare feet stayed where they were, but the yellow irises kept rising and rising above endlessly stretching paws. Good God, that's not Pavoné, but some nightmarish beast a devil has bred for some hellish purpose!

At this moment the clock on the wall struck the hour. The cat continued to uncoil its body, bigger and bigger with each
chime…

After what seemed an eternity, Mr. V.'s head filled with silence, the cat stopped growing, and its mouth opened into a gigantic yawn. Fanny came in and wished him Merry Christmas.

Mr. V. braced himself for a battle. He searched around for his socks and his shoes and was very soon surrounded by people laughing and talking excitedly. Everyone was searching, but the socks and shoes were nowhere to be found. Mr. V. remained irrevocably barefoot. Suddenly he realized he was starving.

They led him into the kitchen, where he enjoyed the most revolutionary feast in his life. He was eating ferociously, as if in a struggle to change the entire world order. He threw himself on the innumerable plates and glasses with a force that gathered in itself everything he would have to later explain to Madame. An onlooker would have thought that, instead of taking energy from the food, he was expending great amounts of it by chewing and swallowing, all the time oblivious to his bare feet.

At some point he caught sight of his chauffeur, who was walking with a wet towel around his head and a glass in his hand. The chauffeur smiled apologetically and Mr. V. responded with a shrug of his shoulders. War is war, nothing to be done about that.

 

34.
Kids

 

Philip settled for one of the crowded bars where he was a regular. He was known by a name different from his real one, like most people in the bar. Girls flew by his table, stopping for a moment or two—Tonny, Rallie, Bunny, Stephie—all of them second and third-year students at the university. They worked as waitresses. Girls from “the countryside” who lived together in a rented apartment in the city, in the neighborhood of Suhata Reka. Their native towns, Radomir, Pavlikeni, and Pleven, were brought together in Suhata Reka by what appeared to be a distortion of geographical space, but the girls dealt with it fearlessly. Philip knew that they juggled their shifts and replaced one another when classes conflicted with their working hours. He knew that they rarely got enough sleep and often starved. That they fought, insulted each other, and thought of separating. Every now and then he would see traces of things he was hesitant to interpret. They called him Doc and would talk to him for hours. Sometimes they told him incredible stories, and he couldn't tell whether the stories were true, or taken from a movie. He knew for a fact, however, that Rallie was a drug addict and he avoided saying anything, afraid to widen the generation gap between them. He felt ashamed for his lack of courage. Once, he brought a female friend to the bar and the girls were delighted. They liked the woman very much and even met with them after work to go to some nightclub together.

He wondered how these kids could live such a life without making a drama out of it. They managed to slip the tragic moments somewhere in between the day's passage into night. They knew everyone and, as far as he was concerned, they seemed to accept his presence as the most natural thing in the world. Philip could not wrap his head around it. They felt for him when he was suffering, but their grief, if that's what it was, resembled weariness more than anything else. Then they would tell him about the most dreadful things without batting an eyelash, and he didn't know whether to believe them or not. And what were they telling their parents? That they were working to pay their way through college, so that the whole family, down to distant cousins, would be proud? Probably all of them had been A-students in their town high schools. Could you call it work, this painful shuttling back and forth between the tables and the bar, wearing tight black skirts, with their little faces white like moonlight? Were these girls the playthings of some inexorable reality, or were they themselves playing, trying out roles to see if they were good for this movie or another? If a disaster was just a matter of time?

Philip turned these questions over and over in his mind like coffee beans in a grinder. At first they would spill with a deafening sound, then they would patter around, lullingly, until ground to a fine powder that covered everything inside. Then the machine would stop turning. Until the next time.

Meanwhile, he kept ordering drinks, knowing that sooner or later he would reach his Rasputin phase, when he would buy a round for everybody and suggest moving on to the next bar.

Why hadn't they gone back home to their parents? All four of them were here, working till five o'clock in the morning. Well, on the other hand, here too were fir branches with tinsel and bells; the snow was shoveled from the sidewalk, the glasses were sliding over the counter, and no one seemed particularly lonely. Rallie moved about like a sleepwalker and burst into laughter from time to time. The other girls were carrying glasses left and right. At one moment, a young woman climbed onto the bar and her shoes flew off toward the tables. People started dancing and clapping. Philip looked around for any of “his” girls and waved his empty glass to Stephie. She brought him another Finlandia vodka, her eyes attentive. The music was blaring in the pulsing reddish light. Smoking and drinking, mere tricks in everyday life, now created a festive orgy of unity.

Then Rallie dropped to the floor and women's voices screamed for a doctor. Philip jumped over some tables, wrapped her in his coat and took her out into the snow, remembering that, luckily, his car was there. As he drove off, he could see the black silhouettes of a group of youngsters. He imagined how, once the car disappeared from sight, they would go back into the bar and continue with their revelry.

Rallie raised her head from the passenger seat next to him, murmured something, and fell back. Philip stopped the car and turned toward her. He could smell urine and felt a surge of panic. For a moment he considered driving her to his place and taking care of her himself. But he started the car and headed for the ER at Pirogov Hospital.

 

35.
Home

 

Nothing could turn back time. Madame V. wished it wasn't Christmas. She stared at the closed door of the oven, not knowing what to think. She could not remember ever feeling so paralyzed and having to sit there and think. And that was precisely what she believed she was doing. Thinking.

She could not call any friends without losing face, but also, it seemed highly unlikely that her husband would be with any of them. So she called the police and the hospitals. Her last conversation was with a general, an acquaintance, who promised he would investigate the matter personally.

Hungry, she remained seated at the linen-covered table. For the first time in her life she had no idea how to get angry. Her two Yorkshire terriers, hopeful for a bite, ran to her every now and then but she would not budge, crushed under her own weight.

It was the first time she had felt her own weight.

 

36.
Tiny Steps

 

At Fanny's, the unfrozen house continued to thaw. As if by magic, everyone appeared happy and content, everyone was able to find a comfortable spot where pleasant things happened to them. Even the cat Pavoné had settled in front of the fire, in the place of Mr. V., and was now relishing the heat like only a cat could. The music, the movement of bodies and voices fit together like Lego pieces following instructions by themselves.

Margarita was peering at the people and things around her, gripped by a new feeling she was aware she could never put into words. But she was not worried about this. After all, she and words travelled their journeys separately. She was sitting, pensively sipping her glass of champagne, knowing that this thing here, this evening, this night… was all well the way it was. There was no fear, there was no reason to be doing anything different from what was being done. What exactly was being done, Margarita did not know, and she did not care to find out. It wasn't the first time Valentin had taken her to a friend's party. Margarita remembered all such occasions.

That was why, in fact, she was feeling confused. And the futility of her confusion was about to make her run away, when suddenly something occurred to her.

She looked at a lit candle in front of her. An ordinary white candle burning quietly in the neck of a bottle. Once, they had gone to the sea and celebrated somebody's birthday at the beach. There were dozens of bottles like this, with candles in them, in a row by the water's edge, stuck in the wet sand, which was gradually swallowing them from below. It had felt good, the soft surf, the still, gentle air with no wind, and the row of candles that were diminishing from both ends. The others were swimming in the sea or dancing, the same as they were doing now, or almost.

And the same as she was doing now, Margarita had then sat on the sand, watching. Or almost… But the same was not the same anymore. For a while she felt imprisoned in some sort of relationship, some connective tissues, like a fly in a spider's web. That was where her confusion was coming from. She was somehow present in both places at once; she was seeing the same thing separately with each eye. If she blinked, the two images would blend.

Margarita struggled. She did not know what she was struggling against, but it was something and it held her in a kind of cocoon. Valentin was standing about two yards away from her, watching her. What he could see on her face resembled a deep trance, which at first made him worry about the glass in her hand. But she was holding it steadily and seemed to be looking at something beyond the walls of the room. He saw a boy sitting down next to her with the clear intent to start a conversation. The boy even waved his hand in front of her eyes—in vain. Valentin sat down next to the boy on his other side and whispered something to him. The boy turned away from Margarita and burst into laughter.

The candle flames flickered in Margarita's eyes. She felt nauseated and dizzy. She wanted badly to get to the end of it. This here, and that there. Here and there, now and then. She was suspended between two points in time. How long it would last, she would never know.

Suddenly it was over. Valentin saw her get up, apparently back to her senses. She finished her glass and left it on the grand piano. She came up to him, bent her head and whispered in his ear, This here is different.

At that moment Mr. V. approached and, turning to her, asked if they had already met. “No, no, we haven't,” Margarita laughed and lifted the lid of the piano. Astonished, Mr. V. watched her sit down on the stool and adjust it to her height. This grand piano had not been opened for years, that was certain. After the first few chords, Mr. V. could tell that the piano was in tune. Maybe because of the cold. Margarita's fingers strolled easily over the keys, and a few chosen people among the present recognized Shubert. And the CD-player was turned off.