Aetherial Worlds

A Young Lady in Bloom

While I was a sophomore at university, I lost my monthly stipend. I needed money—you know, coffee, taxis, cigarettes—so I got a job at the post office delivering telegrams.

It was June. Evenings were as bright as day, not at all menacing, but rather quite beautiful: Leningrad, deserted for the summer; magical streets of Petrogradsky Island. On the building walls and above the entryways, mascarons of cats and mermaids, triangular female faces of resounding beauty: downcast eyes, luscious hair, daydreams. Alleyways bathed in crepuscular light, purple-hued lilac trees in the parks and gardens, and in the distance, beyond the Neva River, the spire of the Admiralty building.

The post office branch was on Kronverksky Avenue. They were happy to have me—not many people wanted to work there in the summer, the pay being poor and the weather sublime. The boss—a woman inflamed with governmental concerns and the weight of financial responsibility—broke down the effortful job of the telegram delivery person.

There is route number one, to the left, and route number two, to the right. The postman comes to the post office branch, picks up the newly arrived telegrams, and walks first this way and then that way, in turn. Officially, the telegrams are sealed, but the postman will definitely peek inside—there is no privacy in correspondence, you can forget about that. This is because the postman is not some dumb robot but a keen psychologist.

What does psychology have to do with it, you ask? Well, for one thing, it’s summer. People are apt to drown in lakes and rivers, you see. Every month at least one telegram announcing that Nikolai drowned is sure to arrive. So just imagine: You bring said telegram and hand it over to a lovely woman who is, perhaps, brushing away a strand of hair with the back of her hand, or maybe wiping her palms on her apron—women, as we know, are forever cooking something. And there you stand, at the threshold of a communal apartment, and this woman is smiling at you as the sun floods the landing, as if shining through water, via the miraculously well preserved stained-glass windows dating back to prerevolutionary days. Nice and clean.

And if you, unaware of the contents of the telegram, should also find yourself smiling, enjoying life, commenting on the beautiful weather or other silly nonsense just as she unfolds that paper only to read “Nikolai drowned”—well, that is quite a blow, quite treacherous, really. It might even cause a heart attack.

No. One needs, whenever possible, to be eased into grief. Bad news is easier to cope with when it’s delivered by a mean person. Thus you must assume a disagreeable, vicious-looking scowl. When the door opens, you have to boorishly blurt out: “Telegram!” No smiling; look away, down at the floor. Shove the receipt toward her—“Sign here.” Once she signs, thrust the telegram into her hands and run like the wind down the stairs. Reaching the landing below, you can catch your breath by the wall, close your eyes, grit your teeth, and tilt your head back, unable to banish the image of this unsuspecting stranger’s sweet face—a face that was just happy for the last time, there, upstairs. On the shore.

Stand there. Try to forget. And back down the delivery route you go.

Contrariwise, suppose one is bearing an arrival telegram—for instance, “Arriving on 15th, train 256, car 8,” a quiet, happy bit of news—but then it’s an old granny who opens the door. That’s who stays home in the daytime for the most part, old grannies. And this granny—we are talking about the early 1970s, mind you—this old lady still remembers the war, still hasn’t quite recovered from it, and God knows how many death notices she’s held in her hands! Therefore, as soon as she sees the telegram, she starts backing away with fear in her eyes, her palms raised to push back the impending news, mumbling, “No, no, no…” To prevent this, one must, preemptively, from outside the door, assume a carelessly happy visage and right away, without crossing the threshold, wave the telegram, crooning: “Everything is okay, here is a nice and happy message for you, they are on their way, start baking those pies!” Blather like that.

The pay for a successfully delivered telegram was seven kopeks; for a failed attempt they paid three kopeks each. That is, if nobody was home, you’d write out a little slip that read “You’ve got a telegram, it’s at the post office, feel free to call,” and you’d pop that into the mailbox. That didn’t mean, however, that you wouldn’t attempt to redeliver. No, you’d duly bring it back in an hour, and again in two, but everyone would still be at work, you see, still nobody would be home…. The particulars of this profiteering scheme are clear, yes?

Therefore, the morning shift brought in more bacon. Three unsuccessful delivery attempts and one successful—that’s sixteen kopeks per telegram for you. Many made a living that way. The fixed monthly income of a salaried postman was thirty-two rubles, if memory serves. Now, if you chose to be a free agent, so to speak, it came out to about the same, a ruble a day—six of one, half dozen of the other—but it left the door open to pilfering the government budget for sixteen kopeks, and I wouldn’t cast a stone at such a pilferer. Not every thief deserves to rot in jail, as far as I’m concerned.

Another source of enrichment was other people’s grief. Wakes, specifically. One time I got lucky. I delivered a sympathy telegram: “Please accept my deepest condolences. My heart goes out to you.” The door was opened by a grieving widow; behind her, the well-to-do apartment of an intellectual. Blue wallpaper, French Empire−style furniture, portraits in oval frames. Assuming an appropriately somber countenance, I handed her the telegram. The widow signed the receipt and gave me a twenty-kopek tip.

Wowza! This was my very first tip. What a peculiar feeling! I walked out and sat down on a park bench to have a smoke and a think. This was a lot of dough. I contemplated: Are tips degrading to a human being? Nah, they are not. They bring only joy—apologies to the widow and the stiff. Your time to fade, my time to bloom. I was eighteen years old, and I fully intended to bloom. With flying magenta colors.

I finished my cigarette and walked back to the post office—another sympathy telegram. I promptly delivered it to the widow. She accepted it, but a shadow made its way across her face—a specter not of the grave but of the impending expenditure: she rewarded me with fifteen kopeks. All right, I could see where this was going. “Quit coming here begging me for handouts” was written all over her tear-stained face, though I never said a word—solemnly handing her the delivery receipt, my ballpoint pen hanging from its burlap cord, before silently disappearing into the malodorous darkness. Her apartment was on the first floor, off the back courtyard. There were radiators—ice-cold in the summer—with oakum poking out. Earth-brown walls. An empty light socket. The third telegram got me ten kopeks, and all subsequent ones—nothing. The widow simply tore the telegrams out of my hands with unadulterated hatred in her eyes and slammed the felt-padded door with a dull thud. Sayonara.

The courtyard system in Saint Pete is fascinating and convoluted. Apartments are numbered in unpredictable ways. In a particular building there could be apartments numbered 14, 15, 15а, 3, 78, 90, 16, 24, 18, and—on the very top floor—apartment number 1. Numbers 7 and 8 would be skipped and the entrance to apartment number 6 would be from another building. Or maybe from the alleyway. Some doors had no numbers at all, and the landings had no light, and so you’d stand there on the back staircase, the faint smell of garbage permeating the darkness, your hands probing the outer padding of the doors, while you’d try to make out the indistinct voices behind them. Or, more often than not, you’d stand in deafening silence, disoriented, as if under water. Many precious hours were wasted in trying to find the right apartment.

Toward the end of my post office days I befriended a disabled postman who’d made a little book with clear diagrams of all the front and back entrances along route one and route two—what a joy to behold! He was a full-time employee for thirty-two rubles, and he had respect for his work: he took his time, walked at a moderate pace, knew the dangerous and the friendly apartments and the one where the psycho resided—the one who would grab your hand and drag you inside his hot, balmy abode reeking of sweet cologne—knew where the twin girls lived, knew who was bedridden and who spent weeks away from home. He was a strange man, more cuckoo than a clock factory, off his trolley and out to lunch. He had only one interest: delivering telegrams.

It was as if he were a proud soldier of some Postal State, a humorless Government Agent in awe of Postal Work as if it were some lustrous Project, or a System that—like the lymphatic or nervous—was responsible for the smooth operation of the body politic. And for us—the temporary and the carefree—he, to say the least, lacked respect. Perhaps he imagined himself some Old World official, circa 1808, in the newly designed livery of His Majesty the Tsar’s Royal Post Office: a dark-green kaftan with a black collar and black cuffs, buttons adorned with a crossed anchor and ax. That’s how I perceived him, anyway, and upon spotting him from afar in the sparse summer crowds—thin, back straight, walking his route—I would think: There, through the careless and laughing masses, comes the Government itself, advancing sternly and with measured step, smelling of sealing wax, burlap cords, ink, and rubber stamps.

He showed me his diagrams without quite sharing them, never letting them out of his hands—If you need ’em, pound the pavement and make your own—as if he were privy to State Secrets, schematics of railroads, blueprints of underground factories, floor plans of strategic granaries. He would not surrender them to either a friend or the Enemy. If a bullet or death claimed him, he’d quickly chew up and swallow his little book, the ink from its pages dripping into his stiffening larynx.

Petrogradsky Island had many beautiful buildings not yet entirely lifeless despite it all: the blockade, Soviet poverty, the specters of those who were unjustly arrested and dragged away, on wobbly legs down battered steps. One building had a fireplace in the lobby; it had just sat there neglected and cold since prerevolutionary days. There must have been a time when the fireplace was lit—a time when there was a carpet lining the staircase, at least up to the second or third floor; when the entryway smelled of coffee and vanilla; when the building was warm, and there was a mustachioed concierge; when the elevator was a box of light in the filigreed wrought-iron shaft. Now the fireplace was but a grave pit covered in green paint, like the rest of the lobby—green oil paint right over the old marble.

Most of the apartments were, of course, communal, every front door studded with a cluster of doorbells, some dating back to the turn of the century—a flat brass knob the size and shape of half a butterfly, with a sign encircling it that read “Please Turn.” Those were mechanical doorbells, not electric. I knew how they worked—our friends had one at their apartment. From that half butterfly a wire ran up to the ceiling, where a brass strip with a little bell attached to it stuck out from the wall. If you turned the butterfly, the bell would ring. (When people found out that brass contains copper—a valuable material—all those sweet “Please Turn” signs were ripped out by their roots and sold for scrap metal; the brass doorknobs were unscrewed from the doors but were too good for scrap—they filled up antique shops. What beautiful doorknobs they made in 1914! Lilies and water plants—not just plain old handles.)

One door had a particularly remarkable doorbell: a glass box with the owner’s name underneath it, and when you rang, a light went on inside the box, illuminating a sign that read “Heard It. Coming.” They can hear me! They’re coming! What lovely people! And if there was no one there, it would read “Sorry. Not Home.” I asked the young lady who opened the door: “How do the signs switch?” Apparently they were connected to a lock cylinder on her door inside the communal apartment. Upon leaving she’d turn the key and, presto chango: “Sorry. Not Home.” How splendid!

You deliver a telegram to the end of the route—a kilometer there and a kilometer back—and there is a new one waiting for you at the post office. Got to return the same way. I was eighteen: I wanted to bring rationality and order to the postal system, if not to the entire world. I wanted to be useful. I’d say to my boss: “Why should I rush to deliver this arrival telegram when this person isn’t actually arriving for another week? And everybody is at work during the daytime anyway. Let me accumulate, say, ten telegrams, and walk the route in a few hours. It’ll be more fun for me, and the post office will save money!” But she’d fearfully reply: “No, no, we can’t; the instructions are to deliver immediately.” She was a jittery and anxious woman.

One sunny and beautiful June morning—dewy, filled with birdsong and lilac trees—I saw her hurriedly walking to work, hunched over, eyeglasses pointed forward, not seeing anything beyond her governmental concerns, arms dangling limp like ropes in front of her. She had trouble sleeping; mornings did not bring her joy: To hell with morning dew, birds be damned, lilacs be burned. There are instructions, and people keep trying to deviate from them. How does one keep track? How does one restore order? You can’t check up on everyone! You can’t follow them down route one and route two simultaneously! And there is also a secret organization to deal with: SIGMA! Coded governmental communiqués arrive via the telegraph wire. Painful though it is, one is forced to entrust these ultrasecret telegrams to a frivolous coquette. What if the enemy, you know, does something or other? Maybe it’s best to wait half an hour for the cripple from route two and entrust the Government Secret to him. He’s a soldier! He wears a uniform! But waiting is forbidden! The instructions say IMMEDIATELY! Ay, there’s the rub.

The boss lady would hand me a carefully sealed telegram for SIGMA, and I was to march straight to the checkpoint at the gates, deliver this Government Secret wordlessly to a watchman with a rank of no less than colonel, and likewise without a word accept a countersigned receipt, before marching straight back. She’d squeeze my hands in her icy grip, looking deep into my eyes with apprehension and distrust: Will you deliver? You won’t let me down, will you? Can I trust you?

She’d watch me go, her teeth chattering anxiously, but never did it come to pass that I crossed over to the enemy lines through an underground passage, taking secret ciphers and codes with me.

Meanwhile, all the locals, as is often the case, knew perfectly well what lurked behind those unmarked walls—the Institute of Applied Chemistry, where poisonous liquids and explosives were developed, polluting the water and soil of one of the most beautiful parts of town for decades to come. For those of you unfamiliar with our topography: here, right in the city center, is the Pushkin House (also known as the Institute of Russian Literature), and there—just across the river—metal barrels filled with sarin and soman or whatever, some type of mustard gas. Unmistakably Soviet city planning.

First time I went there, I got lost: What do you do when there is no sign and no address? “Do you happen to know where SIGMA is?” I asked the first person I came across. “Oh, the Institute of Applied Chemistry? Just cross over there and walk along the fence—that’s where the checkpoint is!” It goes without saying that I’d fold over a corner of the telegram, peek behind the safety seal, and read the secrets sent from Central Command via such insecure channels. Anybody would have done the same. Alas, it contained nothing of interest.

Luckily, on the other side of Kronverksky Avenue there was a zoo, peaceful and overflowing with white and purple lilac trees, and occasionally I would deliver there, too. First, some men had caught a bear cub in the Altai Mountains and wanted to see if the zoo had any need for it. Then, for some reason, a telegram arrived declaring that sixty blankets had been stolen. What blankets? Who could have stolen them? And from where? What did this have to do with the zoo? These were bits and pieces of other people’s stories, a scattered mosaic, a peek into other people’s lives—a little cloud of music drifting from a window, laughter coming from an open door, a corner of a room glimpsed through a slit in the drapes. Somewhere in the vicinity lived my most mysterious addressee, a certain Konkordia Drozhzheyedkina. How old was she? What had her parents been thinking with that name? Was she happy? Did she see from her window the white night outside, the alleyways covered with transparent haze and twilight-colored bushes? Whom does she love? Who loves her? And me, whom do I love?

As a post office employee, I was able to get into the zoo for free. I would wander to the farthest corners, toward the water, toward the Neva River, where only the birds were, where no one else would go: people want to look at elephants, at polar bears, at giraffes, to visit the nursery where you can pet baby tigers while they’re still harmless, but they don’t go to look at the birds. I decided to pluck a feather from a peacock and to wear it in my hair, or something; I hadn’t yet figured it out. I just really wanted a peacock feather and that was that. It occurred to me to lure the bird with some bread, and when it approached the fence, to grab it by its tail—perhaps the feather would simply fall out. Strewn over there, just out of reach, were a bunch of feathers shed by other peacocks. The enclosure was a dense chain-link fence, and the peacock, untempted by my offering, was eyeing me belligerently, when loud, mocking laughter suddenly filled the air: clearly I’d been discovered by the zookeepers.

I lurched away from the crime scene, hurriedly getting up from all fours, pretending that nothing was going on, brushing the dirt off my knees and assuming an expression of detachment: Who, me? I’m not doing anything, just bent down to read the sign—I can’t see very well. But there was nobody around me, not a soul to be seen in the alleys, while that snide, high-pitched female laughter, loud and derisive, hung in the warm air like an umbrella, like a dome or a semisphere of summer sky—Ha-ha-ha-ha! It hovered above me, above my plans to mug the peacock, above my cheapskate calculations—a kopek saved is a kopek earned—above my plans to bloom and my plans to live. It was as if the Creator had suddenly taken notice of me: So you like to spy on others, do you, you pitiful gnat? I can see right through you! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

It was a moment of truth, albeit an indistinct one: when someone is laughing at you but you can’t see who, unforeseen horizons open up, walls move, lights switch on, a vastness is revealed. I stood there, my feet rooted to the sandy walkway, overcome by a vaguely existential shame. So that’s how it will be at Judgment Day. Ha-ha-ha-ha! The woman—or was it God?—was beginning her third round of denunciatory laughter when I spotted her: light of color, with gray wings and skinny, long legs, beak open and head tilted back, she was laughing inside her enclosure—a Caspian gull, or Larus cachinnans. Go to hell, stupid bird. You scared me shitless.

“Please send bedpan and enema.” I went to deliver the telegram: no one was home—delivery slip in the mailbox—back to the post office. “Bedpan and enema no longer needed.” So do they need it or not? What’s happening over there? I asked the boss—she never slept, she just sat there, staring with red, puffy eyes at the uncontrollable world around her—Should I deliver these telegrams or not? They cancel each other out, and there is nobody home! Perhaps they are boating on the Neva? Maybe, to hell with them?

“Deliver both! Instructions are to deliver! Who knows? They might check up on us!”

I attempted to deliver these mutually exclusive requests once, and then again, and then for a third time, to the mysterious owners of the colonic irrigator. I walked back and forth well into the night, but the apartment was silent: nobody ever opened the door, nobody called the post office; nobody was home the next day, or the one after that.

And then I got tired of it all, and I quit.

The cripple watched me go with disapproval: he knew, he just knew I’d make a lousy soldier of the Post Office. The boss lady was already nervously contemplating her next recruit—fresh out of prison, he was as white as a drowned man; he was being led around by the hand by his beautiful young wife, who wore an enormous, puffy gold bracelet. “Do you think I can trust him?” the boss lady asked me, without bothering to wait for an answer, as she was talking to herself.

I left, taking home a whopping thirty-five rubles, the equivalent of an honor student’s monthly stipend. I feasted on black currant ice cream with syrup and then went to my parents’ dacha: July promised to be just as lovely as June had been. And indeed, it was. Only it seemed to me for a long time afterward that the world had changed imperceptibly. As if the noise and the interference had quieted down somehow. Or perhaps I’d simply gone deaf.