Pushkin Hills (9 page)

To be honest, I don’t even know what love is. I am wholly without criteria. Tragic love – that I understand. But what if everything is fine? I find that disquieting. There must be a catch to this sense of normality. And yet what’s even more frightening is chaos…

Let’s say we make it official. But wouldn’t that be amoral? Since morality will not tolerate any pressure…

Morality must flow out of our nature organically. How does it go in Shakespeare:
“Thou, nature, art my goddess.”*

Then again, who said it? Edmund! A rare kind of scoundrel…

So everything is getting terribly confused.

Nonetheless, a question remains: who would dare accuse a hawk or wolf of being amoral? Who would call amoral a marsh, a blizzard or the desert heat?

An imposed morality is a challenge to the forces of nature. In short, if I do marry out of a sense of duty, then it will be amoral…

Once Tanya called me herself. Of her own volition. For someone like her, that was almost subversive.

“Are you free?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said. “I’ve got a teletype.”

For about three years, I’d been turning down all unexpected invitations. The mysterious word “teletype” was supposed to sound convincing.

“My cousin is here. I’ve always wanted you two to meet.”

And why shouldn’t I meet a fellow drinker?

In the evening, I went over to Tanya’s. I had a little for courage. Then a little more. At seven I rang her doorbell. And a minute later, after an awkward crush in the corridor, I saw her cousin.

He had taken a seat in the way police officers, provocateurs and midnight guests do, with his side to the table.

The lad looked strong.

A brick-brown face towered over a wall of shoulders. Its dome was crowned with a brittle and dusty patch of last year’s grass. The stucco arches of his ears were swallowed up by the semi-darkness. The bastion of his wide solid forehead was missing embrasures. The gaping lips gloomed like a ravine. The flickering small swamps of his eyes, veiled by an icy cloud, questioned. The bottomless, cavernous mouth nurtured a threat.

The cousin got up and extended his left hand like a battleship. I barely suppressed a cry when his steel vice gripped my hand.

And then he collapsed onto a screeching chair. The granite millstones quivered. A short but crushing earthquake had turned the man’s face into ruins for a moment. Among which bloomed, only to die shortly thereafter, a pale-red blossom of a smile.

The man introduced himself with importance:

“Erich-Maria.”

“Boris.” I smiled listlessly.

“And now you have met,” said Tanya.

Then she went to fuss about in the kitchen.

I stayed silent, as if crushed by a heavy load. And felt his eyes on me, cold and hard, like the barrel of a rifle.

An iron hand came down on my shoulders. My flimsy jacket suddenly felt tight.

I remember I burst out with something ridiculous. Something terribly polite.

“You are forgetting yourself, maestro!”

“Silence!” uttered the man sitting opposite me, menacingly.

And then:

“Why haven’t you married her, you son of a bitch? What are you waiting for, scumbag?”

“If this is my conscience,” a thought flashed through my mind, “then it is rather unattractive.”

I began to lose my sense of reality. The contours of the world blurred hopelessly. The cousin-structure reached for the wine with interest.

I heard the tram rattle outside. I pulled at my elbows to straighten my jacket.

Then I said, as authoritatively as I could:

“Hey, cousin, please keep your hands to yourself! I’ve been planning to have a constructive discussion about marriage for some time. I have champagne in my briefcase. Give me a minute.”

And with resolve I set the bottle on the smooth, polished table.

This is how we got married.

The cousin’s name was Edik Malinin, as I later found out, and he was a martial-arts instructor at a centre for deaf mutes.

But that day I evidently drank too much. Even before I showed up at Tatyana’s. And must have imagined God knows what…

We got married officially in June, just before setting off for the Riga seaside. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to stay in a hotel there.

The years passed. I couldn’t get published. I was drinking more and more. And found more and more justifications for it.

For long stretches of time, we lived on Tanya’s salary alone.

Our marriage combined elements of extravagance and privation. Between us, we had two separate dwellings within five tram stops of each other. Tanya had about twenty-five square metres and I – two tiny cubbyholes, six and eight metres. Putting it grandly – a bedroom and a study.

Some three years later we exchanged all that for a decent two-room apartment.

Tanya was a mysterious woman. I knew so little about her that I never ceased being amazed. Any fact about her life was to me a sensation.

Once I was astonished by an unexpectedly political outburst. Until then, I had no idea about her views. Seeing
Comrade Grishin* in a newsreel, I remember my wife saying:

“He should be tried for his facial expression alone…”

So an understanding – that of partial dissidents – had been established between us.

And yet we fought often. I became more and more irritable. I was, at the same time, an unrecognized genius and a terrible hack. My desk drawers stored impressionistic novels while for money I created literary compositions about the army and navy.

I knew it displeased Tanya.

Bernovich kept insisting:

“By the time a man reaches thirty he must have resolved all his problems except literary ones…”

I couldn’t do it. The amount of money I owed had long crossed that line where you stop caring. Literary officials had put my name on some sort of blacklist a while ago. I did not want to nor could I actualize myself fully in my role as a family man.

My wife brought up the subject of emigration more often. I became completely disoriented and left for Pushkin Hills.

Officially I was single, able-bodied and a standing member of the Journalists’ Union. I also belonged to
an appealing ethnic minority. Even Granin and Rytkheu acknowledged my literary abilities.*

Officially, I was a full-fledged creative personality.

In reality, I was on the edge of a mental breakdown.

And here she was. It was so unexpected, I found myself at a loss. She just stood there, smiling, as if everything was fine.

I heard:

“You’ve got some colour…”

And then, if I’m not mistaken:

“My darling…”

I asked:

“How is Masha?”

“She scratched her cheek the other day, she’s so headstrong… I brought some tinned food.”

“How long are you staying?”

“I have to be at work on Monday.”

“You could get sick.”

“Get sick with what?” Tanya was surprised.

And added:

“Actually, I’m not feeling all that well anyway.”

That’s some logic, I thought.

“Plus I’d feel uncomfortable,” continued Tatyana. “Sima is on vacation. Roshchin is getting ready to leave for Israel. Did you know that Roshchin turned out to be Shtakelberg? And now his name isn’t Dima, it’s Mordechai. I’m not kidding…”

“I believe you.”

“The Surises wrote; they said Leva got a good job in Boston.”

“Why don’t I see if I can take the day off?”

“What for? I’d like to hear the tour. I’d like to see you at work.”

“This isn’t real work. This is a job… I, by the way, have been writing stories for the last twenty years and you’ve never shown any interest…”

“You used to say fifteen. And now it’s twenty. Even though it hasn’t even been a year.”

She had a fantastic way of making me lose my temper. But it would have been stupid to fight. People fight due to an abundance of life.

“We here are something like entertainers. We help workers have a culturally stimulating vacation.”

“That’s wonderful. How are your colleagues?”

“There are all kinds. We have one local guide here, Larissa, and every day she bawls over Pushkin’s grave. She sees the grave and then the waterworks come…”

“Is she faking it?”

“I don’t think so. A group of tourists once gave her a set of kitchen knives worth forty-six roubles.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that.”

Just then Galina called my name. A group of tourists from Lipetsk had arrived.

I turned to Tatyana:

“You can leave your things here.”

“I only have one bag.”

“And you can leave it here…”

We headed towards a blue bus spattered with mud. I said hello to the driver and found a seat for my wife. Then I greeted the tourists:

“Good morning! The administration, curators and staff of Pushkin Hills welcome our guests. They have entrusted me to be your guide. My name is… This is what’s to come…”

And so on.

Then I explained to the driver how to get to Mikhailovskoye. The bus started. The sounds of the radiogram drifted in as we rounded the bends:

        
Give the gift of fire, like Prometheus,

        
Give the gift of fire to big and small,

        
Do not begrudge the people,

        
The fire of your soul!

Going round the decorative boulder at a fork in the road, I said venomously:

“Pay no attention. It’s just for show.”

And whispered to my wife:

“These are Comrade Geychenko’s dumb ideas. He wants to create an enormous amusement park here. He even hung up a chain on a tree, to make it more scenic. They say students from Tartu stole it. And dropped it in the lake. I say, bravo Structuralists!”

I led the group, stealing a glance at my wife from time to time. Her face, so attentive and a little lost, struck me anew. The pale lips, the shadow cast by her eyelashes and mournful look…

Now I was addressing her. I told her about a slight man of great genius in whom God and the Devil coexisted so easily. A man who soared high, but ended up the victim of a common earthly affliction; who created masterpieces but died the hero of a second-rate romantic novel. And who gave
Bulgarin* legitimate grounds to write:

“He was a great man, who vanished like a rabbit…”

We walked along the lake. At the foot of the hill loomed another boulder. It was adorned with yet another quotation in Slavonic calligraphy. The tourists circled the rock and began snapping pictures greedily.

I lit a cigarette. Tanya came up to me.

The day was sunny, windy and not hot. A band of tourists, stretching along the shore, was catching up with us. We had to hurry.

A fat man with a notepad approached:

“Terribly sorry, what were the names of Pushkin’s sons?”

“Alexander and Grigori.”

“The eldest was…”

“Alexander,” I said.

“And his patronymic?”

“Alexandrovich, naturally.”

“And the younger?”

“What about the younger?”

“What was his patronymic?”

I looked helplessly at Tanya. My wife did not smile. She looked sad and absorbed.

“Oh, right,” the tourist caught on.

We had to hurry.

“Let’s go, comrades,” I yelled out with pep. “Forward march to the next quotation!”

At Trigorskoye the tour went smoothly, and even felt a bit inspired. Mainly, and I repeat, due to the nature and logic of the exposition.

I was taken aback by one lady’s request, though. She wanted to hear the love song ‘A Magic Moment I Remember’. I told her that I couldn’t sing at all. The lady insisted. The fat man with a notepad rescued me. “Why don’t I sing it,” he proposed…

“Please, not here,” I implored. “On the bus.”

(On our way back the fat man did indeed sing. Turned out this dunce was a wonderful tenor.)

I noticed that Tanya was tired, and decided to skip Trigorskoye Park. I’d done this in the past. I addressed the tourists:

“Who’s been here before?”

As rule, no one has, which meant I could abridge the programme without any risk.

My tourists dashed to the bottom of the hill. Each rushing to be first on the bus even though the seats were plentiful and assigned. While we had explored Trigorskoye our drivers had used the opportunity to go for a swim. Their hair was wet.

“Let’s go to the monastery,” I said. “Take a left from the parking lot.”

The young driver nodded and asked:

“Will you be there long?”