Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories

The Blind Musician

How odd it felt to ring this doorbell while holding the cherished key tight in my pocket. To see again on the coatrack in the entryway her tasteless coat with the mother of pearl buttons. To walk through the rooms with all their brazen mirrors acting all innocent. To inhale the medicine smell that had once been completely aired out. To make as if I didn’t know where the cotton balls were kept. To bear her stranger’s hands holding the same lidded Chinese mug I’d fed him tea in like a little boy.

Zhenya,[6] my sweet Zhenya, I really think I’m better. I don’t get dizzy anymore. I slept last night. True, I had an awful dream: I’d grown a beard. I rushed to the dream book and read that if the beard is long, that means honor and respect; if short, a trial. Lord, what drivel! Wait a little. Alexei Pavlovich will be home from work soon.

No no, Verochka Lvovna,[7] I’ll just help you tidy up and be on my way.

But Zhenya, this might just be the healing action of the little gray housedress. Who knows? And the whole point was to get away from the hospital gown. Listen, there’s no way I can thank you for all you’ve done for us. I do realize how unpleasant it is—the trips to the hospital, the bandages, the pus, the bedpan.

Stop it! And don’t you dare say those things ever again. Did they bring your prosthesis?

What prosthesis? It’s an ordinary brassiere they’ve stuffed with something. Help me hook it up.

There, Verochka Lvovna, look how nice.

At home, in the dark entryway, I bumped into suitcases.

Zhenya, how you’ve grown! I barely recognize you! I remember you when you were this high! You and your father were always playing Gulliver. He’d spread his legs and shout, “Gulliver!” And you’d run back and forth, bubbling over with giggles. Remember? I came to visit and everyone here was hysterical because you’d eaten two apricots and swallowed the pits. The pits were sharp and got stuck in your bottom. Poor thing, you were wailing and no one knew what to do. They were just about to take you to the hospital, but I said, “Stop!” I washed my hands, poured oil over my finger, and in I went! I rotated one pit and both popped out as if they’d been shot from a cannon. And this is my Roman. Do you recognize my Roman? You were little when he and I came to visit and you played together. There was no leaving you alone for a minute or there’d be a fight. Remember how you ate all the candies and said it was him? I locked myself up in the bathroom with little Roman and took a belt to him. Immediately you pounded on the door: “Aunt Mika,[8] Aunt Mika, don’t beat him, don’t beat him, it was me!” You look so much like your papa, not at all like your mama. Your mama and I were like sisters. Here, look, this is us at the seashore, hugging, wearing identical swimsuits. That’s what we told everyone, that we were sisters. Then she got married, became a provincial, and had you. That’s where everything happened to your mama, too. We aren’t staying long, Zhenya dear. Your papa wrote, “Stay as long as you like.” But we’re here just a little while. Once Roman passes his exams, we’ll find an apartment. How pretty you’ve become! May Roman touch your face?

Kind Alexei Pavlovich, something’s happened. Oh no, as always the ardor of my feelings raises no doubts. But in the last few days, I admit, I haven’t been able to shake a sensation that I can’t bring myself to put into words. Just like in Gulliver, the picture, remember? You’re the cook, you’re plucking a turkey, I’m sewing something, and suddenly a face peeks in the window, only it’s not a face of our—Lilliputian—proportions. The turkey falls to the floor. The needle jabs my finger, and the people we’d imagined ourselves to be up to that moment, whose lives were special and happy, are thrown into disarray. But I knew you were right before, you know. It only seems that you’re sculpting me in your own image and likeness, whereas in this reality, rainy since morning, you yourself are merely the fruit of my fantasies, a perfectly commonplace occurrence in belles lettres. Apparently, it doesn’t take a great mind or an exacting imagination to create this world. Make the paper white, the ink black, yesterday’s leftover bread stale, the stockings thrown over the chair back, having given up the ghost, the window transparent from rain, the sky grayish, and the land sinful. But maybe nothing worse happened than what you so feared. Even that little fool Psyche couldn’t love in the dark her whole life. And it certainly wasn’t the sisters’ instigation that made her, on that last night, take a sharpened razor and a lamp filled to the top with oil to identify her secret husband, who was kind to the touch but invisible in the fortunate darkness. Alone now, she worries in her sorrow, although her decision has been made and her soul is adamant. Nonetheless she still wavers, rushes, delays, dares, trembles, despairs, rages, hates, and loves the darkness she has taken in, but evening is on its way to night, and the girl hastily hides the razor under her pillow and covers the burning lamp with a flowerpot. The final moments of anticipation. Agonizing, crazy-making moments that make her shudder. Suddenly the rustle of an approach. And now Psyche welcomes the night ascending to her—its shoulders and back scattered with freckles, like oatmeal. Coitus with the darkness. At last her mystery spouse falls still beside her, rolled up in a ball. Now Psyche, weakened in body and soul, rises, takes out the lamp, clasps the razor in her fist, takes a step, still not daring to look, and lifts the lamp, expecting to see on her bed a god or a beast—but it’s you.

The day after classes ended, I stopped by the university vivarium, but they said Alexei Pavlovich wasn’t there. I walked past the glass cases where white mice swarmed in trays. When I pulled one out by the tail, a whole cluster latched on. Their red eyes burned like cranberries. Frogs were laid up in huge, smelly jars, and the moment you opened a lid, one would fly out and land smack down on the brick floor.

A fish supper at home. They called for me. I locked myself in my room.

Daughter, up and at ’em. The surgeon’s sturgeon’s tired of waiting.

Eat without me, I’ll eat later.

Zhenya, stop it.

I can’t eat out there. He smacks his lips. Then he’ll take a toothpick out of his pocket and dig around.

Why are you being like this?

Like what?

Enough, let’s go.

Mika took the fish bones out for Roman, laid them on the rim, and the dish turned into a staring eye with off-white lashes.

You said: no letters. My naïve Alexei Pavlovich. You forgot about cartes postales. Not in vain did a bald professor at the Vienna Military Academy once drop the first postcard into a mailbox, paying for it with two Kreuzers and his entire soul. Ever since, the departed professor, taking on cardboard flesh, has languished around the world and found no rest. I found a whole pack of them neatly held by a rubber band in Vera Lvovna’s writing desk. When you were away, you sent cards home daily with the sights and views, and—unintimidated by the censors—called your spouse your little mouse, your little bun, even your little fanny. Moreover, you always drew yourself in a picture: a stick man in a hat either roaming spectrally down the Samara embankment, or standing like a poet’s shadow on the bluff of the Piatigorsk gap, or scrambling up the Admiralty spire like a gorilla. How, you might well ask yourself, can one resist such temptation, having fooled you and the postal department, of writing a postcard, an open letter, addressed at this late hour to all sleeping humanity? Here, please accept, from a place where this night cannot reach me, an unpretentious card with a glossy country landscape, gilt edging on the sunset clouds, a card scratched by swifts, splashed by a drop of a blossoming pond fragrant with lilac and iodine—it’s my father, lost in conversation, whose bandaged finger keeps missing the point. Do you recognize our clumsy house, saturated with damp, permeated by mosquito buzzing, the sunny porch where a wet footprint vanishes instantly, the peeling barrel where the little bleakfish I’d caught were hidden away until October? When the barrel was emptied for the winter, the fish flopped all over the ground, sticking to the fallen leaves. And here, under the vaults of hundred-year-old lilacs, a windy June supper. Your wife is twirling the binoculars and laughing crazily, aiming them first at the moon, which has surfaced like a jellyfish, then at the deck chairs flapping in the wind, then directly at her plate. A pimply lass who arouses herself at night with her finger is eating the icing roses off the cake. I don’t think that was me, but you know better. You’re across from me. There’s a whole beard in the rusty lilac inflorescences that drop on the table. You wink and mumble, “These are dead moths;” you scoop them up in your glass with a spoon and lick it off. My father—a cheap drunk—is shouting now, “I told them so. Here you are!” he shouted and brandished his empty glass. “Please be so kind as to join us! I’ll cut their umbilicus. Congratulations on coming into the Divine light!” But they’re shouting, they’re not satisfied! They think, the Divine light is over there, while over here is the very Kingdom of Darkness.

Of course, my unclad little people, there’s been a misunderstanding, you were misled, I explained to them, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s too late. Live as best you can! Here, my brothers, each has his own share of agony, his own path of suffering is marked out, and there’s no avoiding it. Each must drink to the dregs! They strain and howl, as if to say, Why? We are innocently condemned! they say. And I tell them, Hush! You’re all like this at first. But later? You don’t honor your father and mother, you create idols, you commit adultery, you covet your neighbor’s ass! So suffer and don’t squawk! But again they holler! And wail!

When I came in, Alexei Pavlovich was wiping the dirt off the jars, disturbing the dissected popeyed creatures’ peace.

Zhenya? Why are you here? Someone could stop by at any time.

Look at that, Alyosha,[9] you’re afraid of me. I can tell. I was at your house yesterday. I went to see Vera Lvovna specifically because I knew you weren’t home. I went to convince myself that she doesn’t have long left. There’ll be no need to hide, and this humiliation will end. We’ll live openly, together, afraid of no one, and I’ll give you a wonderful baby, scrumptious, chubby-cheeked, blowing bubbles from satisfaction when we tell him the bogeyman’s coming to get him. My father will deliver the baby. He’ll hold my hand and say, “Push, mama, push!” And everything will turn out well. I’ll recover, I’ll crunch a cucumber, and pale, tormented, and beautiful, I’ll look down at you from my window, as you stand on the sidewalk under an umbrella, chilled to the bone, happy.

Zhenya, you have no idea what nonsense this is. You have to understand. This is vile, this is just plain vulgar, this is the height of banality—to cheat on a dying wife with a young idiot in love with love!

Yes yes, Alyosha, exactly so. A hymn to vulgarity. Banalissimo. Pistils and stamens. Life and death.

Quiet, Zhenya, I’m exhausted. Listen, tomorrow I’m taking Vera Lvovna south, to Yalta. For a month maybe. Or more. We’ll see how it goes. You have to understand. Even when I talk to her about the weather, I feel like the worst scoundrel on earth! You know I’d leave her without a second thought, but how can I abandon someone in this situation? You don’t understand. Some things are more important than love! Zhenya, my sweet Zhenya, we must part. Temporarily, of course. Vera says to me, “Where are you taking me? Why? What does it matter where I croak? Our friends are here, here Zhenya comes by.” And I don’t know what to tell her or how to explain. Well, why don’t you say something? Say something quick, before they come in.

Bon voyage!

I was reading to Roman. Me in the armchair under the lamp, him on the couch. When the book was over, we sat in silence. I kept turning the lamp on, then off. What now? I mean, is the light on or is it dark? Not that that matters, Evgenia Dmitrievna, because I still hear you sitting. I’m a nocturnal animal, you might say, Evgenia Dmitrievna, and we don’t need light. One night I’ll up and pounce on you. I’ll sneak up and pounce.

It’s been night for a long time, my kind Alexei Pavlovich, it’s past two, and I wanted to sleep, but I can’t, and my thoughts are all of you, or rather, of me—actually, they’re one and the same. Can you hear the beetles droning in the fogged-up kill jar? Do you remember? You were lying in the spotty birch shade, covered with yesterday’s newspaper, and sunspots and crooklegs were running across it. The fidgety daughter of your aging classmate, with whom you set out to assemble a collection for the dacha nature museum she’d just devised, was playing shaman around you, scooping up anything that flew, crawled, or stirred with her swift net. Having caught some pointless creature, the novice insectarian brought it over for identification. A piece of an article had imprinted itself on your wet forehead mirror-image. For a long time you examined the find under your magnifying glass, listened closely, eyes shut, to the droning in your fist, and finally announced, “Congratulations, child! This is the rarest stroke of luck! What a marvelous example of Dungus flyus.” That was enough for this ninny to double up in the grass in fits of cascading girlish laughter. After she caught her breath, she badgered you about your wart: the girls had showed her a house where an old woman lived who bit off warts and licked the wound; she had some kind of special saliva. You were embarrassed and didn’t know where to hide your hand. Later, on the cliff, she found a mighty, primordial swing: a very long rope with a stick at the end had been tied to a huge oak. There you were, sitting on a stump and reading a newspaper, though they’d long been expecting you for dinner, while the bundle of mischief swung and swung, and you, tearing yourself away from the letters, watched her rise up on tiptoe and clumsily pull up her foot to finally get one end of the bar under her, watched her freeze for a second, take a step, in the pose of a boy galloping on a pony, and then pull up her other leg, take a hop, lean way back, and fly off, spinning slowly, into the clouds.

I didn’t go to classes and spent all day in bed. Early that morning my father came home from his shift. He was mumbling something, talking to himself, and he clattered his spoon in his glass for a long time. Then he went to bed. Mika got up and started checking on me with a thermometer, or milk, or drops of some kind or other. She tried to talk me into rubbing my legs and chest down with vodka. At last it was quiet: Mika took Roman to the professor’s for his lesson, but before leaving she brought me a plate of apples. I snaked the apple peel spirals around my arms like damp bracelets. The boiler man stopped by to check the flue. He was just a minute, but the smell of wet, broken-down boots, cheap cigarettes, and green firewood lingered all day. My father got up. The crackle of fresh newspapers and the hot breath of borscht reached me. Mika and Roman came back from his lesson. Roman started tuning the piano, all the time repeating that the instrument was fine but very much neglected. He banged on the keys until I started pounding on the wall with an ivory knife handle. They quieted down. That evening my father and Mika went somewhere, and Roman paced around the apartment silently, feeling everything as he came to it. Only the old parquet creaked. That night I couldn’t get to sleep, but on the other side of the wall they droned on. I was listening hard but could catch only snatches. Then I picked up a big glass flask that had roses in it, removed the flowers, poured the water into the chamber pot, and pressed the flask’s bottom to the wall.

What are you trying to prove and to whom? There’s no going into your place: you have a corpse peeking out of every nightstand. You’re still young, healthy, and strong. No one would dare reproach you for anything. You were a little boy then and you still are. You dug your heels in and stood counter to life, and you think you can hold out. But you’ll be swept away. You’ve got this idea that Zhenya—it’s as if she were her deceased mother and you were living for her. But that’s wrong. You know nothing about your daughter. She’s not yours anymore, she’s her own person. You keep reaching for her to keep from drowning, but you don’t have her anymore. Have you told Zhenya about her mother?

Mika and my father were silent for a long time, only I could hear the wet stems dripping from the edge of the table onto the floor. The ear I had pressed to the flask’s neck was sweating.

When she came to us then she wasn’t herself, I could tell right away. I asked, “Why didn’t you bring little Zhenya?” And she said, “Leave me alone.” I thought, Well, to hell with you. Living makes me sick even without you. If you don’t want to tell me anything, you really don’t have to. Then for some reason she stopped by at my neighbor’s, a pharmacist. His little boy used to like all kinds of experiments, and his father had made him a laboratory. The lad started showing her his treasures. “If you drink from this test tube,” he said, “you’re a goner!” All this became clear later. In the middle of the night I suddenly woke up from a scream. I couldn’t figure out what was going on because people don’t scream like that. Then it was quiet. My Roman was breathing heavily, but she wasn’t there. The bathroom door was locked from the inside. Behind the door there was some movement, shuffling, rustling. Scraping. I shouted to her, but she didn’t respond. I wanted to give it a kick to make the latch give way, but then I looked and her fingers were reaching under the door. I shouted, “Your fingers, take back your fingers!” But they kept reaching. Somehow I got across the balcony to the bathroom window, broke the window, and nearly lost my grip, though it was only the second floor. I grabbed her and picked her up. She looked at me with horror in her eyes, she was trying to say something, but there was a jumble where her mouth should have been.

Evgenia Dmitrievna, thank God I’m blind, not legless, and there is no need to grab me by the arm and push me. I just need to hold onto your elbow. Like this. Let’s go. And if you think that this makes me deeply unhappy, then you are mistaken, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I can see that you’re unhappy. I can’t see, of course, I said that wrong, though that’s not something you can see with eyes, rather I can sense it. But you’re not unhappy because you can’t fly, for instance, or walk through solid objects, walls or earth. Isn’t that so? I know you’re afraid of me, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I mean, you think you pity me, but in fact you’re afraid. Because it’s yourself you pity, not me. Thinking about me, you imagine yourself in the dark, eyeless, and naturally for you this is scarier than dying. But the point is that blindness is a seeing person’s concept. I live in a world where there is no light or dark, and that means there’s nothing awful about it. My God, you should have warned me there was a sidewalk here.

God, prankster and coward, supreme lover, insatiable sperm-hurler, who each time chooses the guard for his fevered treasure on a whim—a bull-boor, swan-sneak—or sometimes you pierce me like sunlight—you’re still a silly-billy. Remember how you kept dawdling and mumbling that you were afraid of hurting me? A god-child, even on a stolen bed, on that heavenly sheet, you wanted to be my obedient reflection, my pliant guide, and here you wanted to be my child. Here’s Europa, straddling the horned monster, driving him on with her heels, Leda enveloping her flock with rustling wings, Danae grabbing the stiff but timid ray of light with both hands. A god-bungler, you tried to snatch everything on the fly, displaying your obscene zeal, and you became reckless, surfeited, pitiless, each time collecting your tribute more and more divinely, more and more lustfully. It was both frightening and thrilling to see the squinting, blood-filled bull’s eye, to feel the swan feathers tickling my hips and the beak cropping the fragrant grass, and to see the golden rain twisting and turning as it spanked my belly and breast. Do you remember how you came to love the Mount Ida shepherd? The boy didn’t suspect a thing, the boy with the rooster, or rather, chicken leg wrapped in a napkin so it was easy to hold; we took the other leg to the hospital. The child sat Turkish-fashion, poking the air with his knees; still wet, not chilled after bathing, he gnawed the leg, sucked the bone, crunched the cartilage, and his sharp little-boy shoulder blades, reflected successively in two mirrors and so seeming like someone else’s, kept appearing and disappearing. Could this bird have flown past Ganymede? The naked adolescent jumped up, froze warily, not knowing whether to hide his nakedness from the eagle, still not understanding but already rigid from sensuous horror. The talons grabbed the boy’s arm where his pockmarks were, squeezed, pierced them painfully, nearly broke the skin. Ganymede broke away, ran off, and tried to scream, but gasped for air: the mighty black wing fell on him and crushed him. Ganymede tried to beat it off, but his hands were twisted behind his back. Fear and sweetness mingled, the boy was afraid but simultaneously urged on this suppressed squawk, and the sharp bird tongue, wetting his ear, and the royal eagle talon, which had already groped out the road to the sky. Don’t listen to me, my thinking pistil, know only that I love all of you, from your gray hair to the two hot hamsters squeezed in my hand.

I walked by a few times. Then I couldn’t help myself and went up. I was just about to put the key in the lock when I thought I heard someone walking on the other side of the door. I was about to go away but thought better of it and rang.

So, you’re Dmitry’s daughter. Come in, don’t just stand there. Alyosha told me, “Mama, I’m going to take my Verochka to the sea, but you can stay here for now. You never know what might happen.” So here I stay. I think, who have I dressed up for, old woman that I am, got all made up for, put on my rubies for, set out the brandy for? I never expect visitors. Then all of a sudden—you. Drink up, sweet girl, drink a glass with an old woman, or else I’ll go on drinking alone and reminiscing. Alyosha was very young when I said, “Eat your sausage, son!” He refused. Then I said, “Do you want me to make you a Maltese cross?” I cut off the sausage edges and fried it up. He ate it all and asked for more. “A Maltese cross!” he shouted. “A Maltese cross!” I said, “You’re my nut, Alyosha! You’re eating words, not sausage.” What a happy one you are, sweet girl. You still don’t know that you are me. You don’t understand? No need. You wouldn’t anyway. And by the time you do, I’ll be gone—my skin, my hair, my eyes, my guts will be gone. And what’s the use of bones alone?

I woke up and thought it was raining, but it was doves on the iron cornice.

Poor Mirra Alexandrovna decided I couldn’t take a step without her. Here she was, torturing herself and me. But in fact, it’s she who’s helpless, not me. Getting oriented in the so-called visible dimension doesn’t necessarily mean seeing. I assure you, Evgenia Dmitrievna, any blind person orients himself as well as you. That’s not the main thing, you know, it’s trivial. It’s much easier than you think. After all, no two doors sound and no two rooms smell alike. Believe me, all it takes is a rustle, the creak of a floorboard, a cough, to know the size of the room, if it’s a strange one, and whether anyone’s in it, if it’s your own. Empty and filled spaces sound different. It’s easy to know when you’re approaching objects by the reverse flow of air on your face, so it’s absolutely impossible to run into a wall or a closed door. Evgenia Dmitrievna, I can immediately determine for you even a detail as small as whether a room is dusty or clean. Do you want me to tell you what you’re seeing now? I just have to snap my fingers. Permit me. The curtains are drawn. The lamp over your bed is on—all it takes is holding your hand out to feel the warmth. There’s a fresh newspaper and flowers on the table. Here there’s an unmade bed. And the marvelous smell of perfume, eau de cologne, and lipstick is coming from over there. You’re wearing a skirt but no blouse yet. It’s reckless to change clothes in the presence of a blind man, Evgenia Dmitrievna.

What’s happened to you, kind Alexei Pavlovich? I wouldn’t recognize you. Where is your caution and prudence? How can you do such rash and risky things? It was a miracle your message didn’t reach my father, since he always collects the mail. Only today, as if sensing something, out of the blue, I woke at daybreak and lay there for a long time listening to the wall clock and watching it swing on its stem toward the cupboard, but never quite all the way. Then some unconscious alarm, some inexplicable force, made me get up, get dressed, and go down for the mail. The clumps of snow—what the mailman left behind—still hadn’t melted on the steps in the vestibule. I opened the box: papa’s Gazette, some ads, and suddenly the Swallow’s Nest floats from Crimea to the floor. Addressed in block letters, so he wouldn’t recognize the handwriting, and instead of text, stamp-cancelled emptiness. Gasping from joy, I thought, but sensed with horror, that there was no happiness in this; on the contrary, the blank card held something humiliating, and I loved you in a completely different way. I put the newspaper and ads back, but I folded your little nest in two, slipped it in my pocket, and went back. Everyone was up by then. I think I wrote you before about Roman, the blind man and his mama dreaming of the conservatory. At the home where he used to live, it turns out, their favorite game was gorodki. One person sets up a figure, claps his hands, and runs back, while the other throws a bat. Remember that stuffed leopard cat in father’s study? Roman touched it and said it was a squirrel. Outside, I stopped him for a minute and went to buy ice cream, but he kept talking to me the whole time—because of the street noise he hadn’t realized he was standing there alone. He asked me to teach him chess, but he just couldn’t remember the positions and kept running his fingers over the pieces. If the scissors weren’t in the sideboard, he’d raise a scandal for his mother Mika—he calls her Mirra Alexandrovna. For that matter, he calls me Evgenia Dmitrievna instead of Zhenya. Mika came to me and asked me to put everything back where it was, and I explained that the position things happened to be in on the day of their arrival was by no means set in stone. I come home and lock myself into my room just so I won’t see him. I can’t stand to watch him constantly rubbing his stuck eyelids with his fist and digging snot out with a toothpick and licking it off. You can’t go into the bathroom after him without a burning match. Mika brought us theater tickets. At the same time she laughed, turning to my father: “Every woman is a bit of a Traviata, isn’t that so?” I spent half the day getting ready, but when it was time to go I still wasn’t ready. Roman, sleek, wearing gleaming boots and smelling of Papa’s cologne, was sitting in the hall by the door. Mika kept checking in on me every other minute. “Zhenya dear, let me help you! Zhenya, please, it’s better to get there a little early and wait! Zhenya, how long can this go on? It’s time! Zhenya, I beg of you!” I was all set when my coral necklace broke and the stone berries rolled all over the parquet. Mika waved her arms in panic. “Zhenya, just go, I’ll pick them up!” I flew into a rage. “What do you mean just go! I can’t go like this! I won’t go anywhere like this!” I put on the lilac dress you like, or maybe you just said you did and really didn’t notice, and now I wear it all the time. By the time we left it was obvious we’d be late. I said, “It’s not so terrible. Imagine, we’ll arrive for the second act. We’ll have a nice walk, there’s no rush now anyway. If Alfred sings his aria without us, he’s not going to marry her because of it.” Roman was giving me the silent treatment. After the rain there were puddles everywhere, and each one had to be stepped around or over. A simple, “Careful, there’s a puddle,” said nothing, and a few times Roman stepped right in the mud, splashing himself and me. He walked along pale and angry and didn’t utter a word the whole way, while I chattered on. He stepped into a puddle again, stopped, and stated flatly he wasn’t going anywhere looking like this. I said, “Don’t be silly.” He insisted. I couldn’t restrain myself. “What earthly difference does it make to you what you look like!” A shudder ran through Roman, and he turned around and went home. I followed him. And so we returned in silence. Mika acted as though nothing had happened, as though it was all supposed to happen like that, but she wouldn’t look in my direction. I also forgot to say I went to see your mother. She talked about what you were like as a child. I can just see it, the teary-eyed little boy running not to her but to me and telling me that the mean little boys there were catching baby birds, poking twigs through their eyes, and running around with these fluttering garlands, boasting over who had more.

Papa, are you busy? I wanted to ask you about one thing.

What, now?

All right, it doesn’t matter. Later. Someday.

Naturally, Evgenia Dmitrievna, there are definite drawbacks to any situation. I don’t like street orchestras. Drumming is to me what a thick fog is to you. Or a snowfall, for instance. Then it’s like even the streetcar’s wearing felt boots. Or new shoes—that’s a torture only the blind can understand. In general, as a result of their limited mobility, nonsee-ers’ muscles are flaccid, their bones thinner, and their fingers—here, look—can be bent back without much effort. And I’ll admit, I don’t find the way you slip me thicker, sturdier dishes so I won’t break them very nice, Evgenia Dmitrievna. On the other hand, believe me, the nonsee-er has his advantages. Why else would the philosophers of antiquity have blinded themselves? Evidently, they understood that your visible world, which you treasure so, is no more than tinsel, smoke, zilch. Those colour pictures say nothing about the essence of things; they only corrupt and render you helpless. With your eyes closed, you couldn’t even get your spoon in your mouth. Of course, it’s easy to cheat a blind person, but you can’t fool him. It’s not hard to artificially make the right facial expression in a conversation, but you can’t do that with your voice. Words lie; the voice never. What seems important to you—colour, shapes, so-called beauty—are in fact of no importance whatsoever. Does it matter what colour the sky or wallpaper is? A bust that is usually admired is really nothing special—a head’s a head. What difference does it make how you look, Evgenia Dmitrievna? I can’t see you, but that doesn’t change anything about our relationship. What difference does it make what kind of hair or nose you have? All that’s important is that you hate me.

The floor polisher came and slid his brush under the couch and out rolled a dried up Christmas mandarin orange, ringing like a nut.

Zhenya dear, what’s the date?

The teenth of Martober.

And they brought a blind man to Him, and they asked Him to touch him. Taking the blind man by the hand, He led him out of the village, spat in his eyes, laid His hands upon him, and asked whether he saw anything. The man looked and said, “I see people passing by like trees.” Then He laid His hands on his eyes again and told him to look again. And the man opened his eyes and saw everything clearly.

I explained, “Alyosha, my son, don’t act crazy! Why should you marry her?” He said, “How can you not understand? Vera’s having my baby!” I said, “Lord, who cares who’s expecting what from who!” And he said, “Mama, what are you saying! What are you saying!” I always called her Vera dear, darling—but she bore me a grudge and set Alyosha against me. Right before the wedding, a miscarriage. “Alyosha,” I told him, “This is a sign.” My little idiot should have postponed the wedding and let everything run its course—to the end. But no, he married out of principle. “You don’t love her,” I told him. His whole body flinched. “How can you know whether I love her or not? On the other hand, I won’t be a scoundrel.” Then there was another miscarriage. That was right before my eyes. A five-month-old boy. Hands, feet, fingers, ears, wee-wee—just like a live baby. The third time they told her, Choose, it’s either you or a child. What choice was there? For some reason Vera decided it was all my fault. That’s ridiculous, of course, but in her condition she might have thought anything. I feel like a mother to her. I do understand… I sent them a gift at Christmas, a Chinese cup with a lid, the one I had from my grandmother. And what happened? I came home and my box was standing by the door. As if they’d said, Go choke on your gifts. You know, Zhenya dear, at the time, I remember, I went to bed and thought I could never get up. No, that’s not it. I could, but I saw no point, no need. I wasn’t even hungry. I lay like that a whole week. I’d eat a bite, wander around my room, and go back to bed. And then, you know, life won out. It’s all so simple. I laughed at myself, fool that I am. Life’s like that, Zhenya. Afterward you have to laugh. Vera and I made our peace somehow. They would visit me on holidays, and I’d visit them. And here she’s fallen ill, and I wanted to move in to look after. “Don’t,” she said. If she says don’t, I won’t. “Zhenya comes over, she helps,” she said. “What Zhenya?” “Dmitry’s, Alyosha’s friend, his daughter. An odd girl, but good-hearted.” And here you are. What a happy girl you are, Zhenya. The very best is just about to begin for you. I know. I had all that. Imagine, Zhenya, for me, after every time, a while later it would heal. Can you imagine? My doctor, the late Pyotr Ilich, was always amazed. “I can’t tell you how many sugarplums I’ve seen in my day, but never in my life anything like this.” That’s what he called them, sugarplums.

So, kind Alexei Pavlovich, I hasten to inform you who is breathing seagull-beaten air that I had a fight with my father, that we made each other so mad we stooped to low blows. We shouted, trying to say the most hurtful things we could, and rejoiced in the wounds we inflicted on each other. I ran to my room and wailed for an hour. I assume you’re already experiencing a slight incapacitation, an unpleasant chill: Did my father find out about me and you, about our plot, about the fact that I’m your secret, and therefore true, wife? Calm down. My father is still in the dark. What set us off was completely insignificant, not even worth mentioning. All that’s important is that we are little by little, bit by bit, sucking the life out of each other, and the closer we are, the more lethal it gets. Mika came in with water and valerian drops and begged me to take them, but I waved her off, knocking the tray out of her hands, and the glass spilled on the bed. She said, “Zhenya, the bed has to be changed!” And I shouted at her, “There is no has to! Leave me in peace!” Here I am lying in the wet and writing these lines to you. You, kind Alexei Pavlovich, are afraid of my father. So am I. I keep imagining telling him. What’s scary isn’t his anger, that he’d kill me and you—because he wouldn’t—but something else. My father is irascible, crude, and crazy. But that’s not why you’re afraid of him. You’re afraid because he’s holy, not of this world. He’s amazing, remarkable, a kind that no longer can or does exist. That woman, my mama, hasn’t existed for a long time, she’s absent in nature, and instead of her is a void easily filled by things and people, but my father has latched onto this void and won’t let anyone or anything in. He thinks he’s doing all this for me, out of love for me. He thinks he’s living for his Zhenya’s sake. He’s never denied me a thing, neither money nor time. He could play with me for hours—puppets, theater, post office, all that childish nonsense. When I was just a child, he was already jealous of the whole world, even when I was simply playing with other children. It’s a disease, insanity. He’s not normal. You never know what to expect from him. He does impossible things. In the spring we went to Petersburg, and on the way back the train was held up at a station; some woman had thrown herself under the wheels. Everyone went to look, and I wanted to go, but my father wouldn’t let me. I lay on my berth and read. Two Germans were standing by the open door in the passageway chatting. It was so stuffy, you couldn’t close the compartment door. The train started. We rode and rode, and the Germans kept chatting, or rather, one spoke while the other listened. I already had a headache, and that voice was so grating and effeminate, I couldn’t stand it. My father stuck his head out into the passage and asked them to move away or quiet down. I said, “They didn’t understand you.” And he replied, “The gentlemen are in Russia, so they should be so kind as to understand Russian.” The German did not quiet down and kept chattering. Finally my father couldn’t take it and hollered at him. “Du, Arschloch! Halt’s Maul!”[10] The Germans cleared out.

I laughed half the way home. When Vera Lvovna had just gone to the hospital, my father and I went to see her. After a thaw, there was sun, the way was impassable, and we could barely get through the mud. My father was hot, he was sweating, striding, his coat open. We bought oranges. I couldn’t wait and ate one on the way and afterward my fingers were sticky. It was hot in the hospital, too. The heat was on, all the windows were sealed shut, and no one was airing the rooms out because they were afraid of drafts. On the ward, there was one withered old lady on one cot, and she was on the other, lying facing the wall. We sat down, my father on a chair, me on the edge of the bed. Without turning around, Vera Lvovna said, “This is it, Mitya,[11] this is it, this is it.” My father cut her off. “Stop it! Those know-it-alls say all kinds of things.” She turned around. Her face was tear-stained and swollen. “Vera, let me look at you.” My father turned down the blanket, pulled her shift to her chin, and started palpating her breasts and feeling under her arms. Vera Lvovna lay with her eyes shut. “This doesn’t mean a thing yet,” my father said. “You’ll see, everything will turn out fine.” Then we ate the oranges. My father slit the peel with his Swiss knife and stripped it off, turning his nails yellow. The peel sprayed. I held one section at a time out to Vera Lvovna. When we left, the janitor on the corner was breaking up the melting ice. The splashes flew straight at us. My father shouted, “Have you gone blind or something?” The man waved his hand, as if to say, Get lost, removed his mitten and blew his nose. My father went up and kneed him in the groin. The janitor deflated and crumbled. I shouted and ran to my father, trying to pull him away, but he shook me off and punched at the man’s cap from above so that the lout fell to the pavement. The ice, his face—it was all covered in blood. My father came to his senses and I led him away. His hands were shaking all the way home, and he kept begging my forgiveness. The day they did the operation, I arrived a little earlier, and there you were, waiting in a nook near the ER. We sat on a small wooden bench by a potted palm and watched the nurse move something from one cupboard to another. She must have been new; I recognized all the old ones. Then the nurse went away and the corridor was deserted. I took your hand and we embraced. That’s how we sat, pressed close. Then the door opened and the nurse came in again. We should have moved apart, drawn back, let go, but that was utterly impossible, and we kept sitting with our arms around each other. The nurse said, “Young lady, let’s go, you can help your mama. Don’t worry so much. Everything’s going to be fine.” Then I stood up and went in.

P.S. In the room where Mika and Roman sleep, the door is opposite the windows. On a sunny day, beams stream through, jostling, and twisting around at the keyhole, and forcing their way into the dark hallway already twisted, draw on the opposite wall a miniature window hung upside down where, if you squat, you can see past the window frame and billowing curtain to the overturned roof of the next building over and the rusty top of a September birch lowered into the blue sky, like the fox tail from the story. Catch it, Zhenya, big and small. Now I was coming back from the bathroom without turning on the light, and I heard movement behind their bedroom door. I squatted and looked into that same keyhole, and Mika was there helping him beat off.

If you dream of your mother and she’s alive, that means trouble; deceased, a change for the better.

I knew a woman I wanted to strangle, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I’d only just been taken home from the school for the blind. “Oh, you’re blind! What a disaster! For long? Have you tried treatment? And there’s nothing to be done?” And so on in that vein. “That’s terrible, never to see the light! I’d rather die than be blind!” Or, “It’s a pity you can’t see. If you could, you’d understand.” Her pity for me was quite sincere. I regret not killing her then because I don’t think they put blind people in prison. But you don’t pity me, so it’s relaxing being with you. Evgenia Dmitrievna, you can’t even imagine how grateful I am to you for that. Then, after I got home, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a cripple. You won’t believe it, but among people just like me I was happy. The legless need to live with the legless, the blind with the blind. I had friends there and it was fun. Though you won’t understand me anyway. Let alone our childish games. They tried to keep us as far away from the girls as possible, but you can’t watch everyone. Nature takes its course, so to speak. What plays a bigger role for us than seeing people are smells. Now you smell like apple soap. I won’t hide it. While you were gone I went around your room and sniffed your clothing, your dress, your underwear. So you see, at school I wanted to go home, but when I finally got home, I was suddenly unhappy. Just imagine. One day my mother was out and I ran away and got clear across town to the school myself. I don’t know what I was thinking or hoping. It was an escape plain and simple. I ran away because it was nice there—no light and no dark, no blind and no seeing. Why I’m telling you all this I don’t know. I love you, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Actually, that’s meaningless. Goodnight.

Papa, tell me something about Mama.

Zhenya, I’m tired.

Tell me.

Tell you what?

Something.

What something?

I don’t care.

Fine, tomorrow, I’m very tired.

Now.

What should I tell you about?

I don’t know. Tell me about how when you were a student you climbed through the dacha window to see mama and her father clicked his nippers.

I already did.

Tell me again.

Zhenya, let me be.

No.

Fine, then. Your mama and her parents were staying at their dacha in Udelnaya. Zhenya, what’s the point of this?

Keep going.

Her father had long nails. He called them nippers and was always clicking them. He was convinced, and tried to convince everyone, that the only help for mosquito bites was if you pressed a cross into the bite with your nail. He treated everyone. He was always trying to sink his nippers into my arm, too. After evening tea I said goodbye and headed for the station because the next day I was leaving for three months to do my stint as a medic at army training camp. Of course, I didn’t go to the station, I went for a swim past the dam. The moment it grew dark, unbeknownst to anyone, I returned. The window was open. Her father was already asleep and her mother was spending the night in town. And that was the first time. The funniest thing was we didn’t know what to do with the sheet. There wasn’t much blood, but still. And the mosquitos were relentless. We lay there slapping each other. I said, “You can say you crushed a bloodsucking mosquito.” She laughed. We never did think of anything. The dawn came, I dressed, and I was about to jump from the windowsill. She whispered, “Wait a sec!” And she held out the crumpled sheet. On the windowsill was a glass jar of water with some kind of flowers. As I was jumping, my elbow knocked it over and it exploded like a bomb. At four in the morning. I leapt over the fence and ran for the station. Not ran, flew. And it was windy, too. I unfolded the sheet, held it over my head by the corners, and hollered for the whole neighborhood to hear, like a lunatic. “Hurrah! Follow me on the attack! Hurrah!” And the sheet flew overhead.

Here you are, Zhenya dear. But I guessed that if you came today everything would be fine. What exactly would be fine, I don’t know. There’s nothing I need, after all. I was like you and I wanted everything. Now I have and need nothing. Alyosha will be here soon with his Vera. He sent a telegram. They wanted to spend longer by the sea, but they only lasted a month. It’s boring there. In the first half of the day, he wrote, they walked along the empty beach and fed the seagulls, and in the evening there was a touring midget theater. Here’s what’s funny. I was in Yalta a hundred years ago, and there were midgets then, too. But Vera keeps getting worse. She’s capricious, has hysterics, makes scenes in public, and cries at night. He’s had it with her. But what can he do? He has to be patient. She doesn’t have long, after all. This is God’s punishment for her, Zhenya dear. He punishes everyone and never lets anything slide. There’s not going to any Judgment Day there. It all happens here. Zhenya, you don’t even know how despicable she is. She cheated on Alyosha. I know everything. Alyosha was on an expedition in Central Asia catching some of his rodents. He asked Vera to come along, but she wanted no part of it, naturally. I was living with them then. Only a year had passed since the wedding. With Alyosha there she kept herself in check, but now it was bedlam. She’d be getting ready to go out and suddenly shout, “Where’s my button?” “You must have lost it somewhere, Verochka, and not noticed.” “But when I came home all the buttons were there!” she said. I reassured her. “Life is funny that way. A button comes off and you don’t notice.” She shouted, “But I’m not crazy! All the buttons were there!” Is that supposed to mean I secretly cut off her lousy button? How many years have passed, yet when I think of that button, I shake with fury. I was supposed to go to Terioki for a rest then. I got to the station, boarded the train, went to get my ticket, and suddenly—Lord, have mercy—no wallet, no ticket, and there was a neat, very straight slit in my purse. I’d been robbed in the crowd at the station. Nothing to be done for it, so I went home. In the pouring rain, with my suitcase. I finally dragged myself there. I looked and there was an unfamiliar umbrella drying in the entry. A man’s raincoat on a hook. It smelled odd, of some stranger, and there was also the smell of fresh nail polish. I listened: water splashing in the bathroom, and someone humming, a bass voice grunting. I opened the door to their bedroom, Alyosha’s bedroom, and Vera was sitting naked in front of the pier-glass with her back to me, her foot resting on the base, polishing her nails. I coughed. She looked up and saw my reflection. I thought she’d cry out, get scared, start squirming and begging my forgiveness. But as if nothing were the matter, she dipped the brush in the bottle and went to smear the nails on her other foot. I said, “Why so quiet, Vera? Say something.” I heard a splash from the bathroom. She replied, “What am I supposed to say?” “What do you mean?” I said. “I just left for the station and here you are…” She laughed. She was sitting with legs splayed, her big toenail red and the rest still bare. “Lord, who on earth are you?” She laughed. “Who? What makes you better than me?” I said, “What about Alyosha?” “What about Alyosha? This doesn’t change anything. What am I supposed to do, jump out the window? If you tell him, he won’t believe you anyway. Leave and don’t come back until tonight.” So I left. I realized right away who it was in the bathroom, Zhenya. But I won’t tell you. Why should I?

It’s very simple, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Here’s a ruler and a Braille board. One—open; two—close. You use this stylus to punch dots in the paper, but only Turkish-fashion, right to left. To read it, you take out the page, turn it over, and read it normally, left to right. Give me your hand. Feel it? One dot on top is A. Two dots one up and down is B. Two dots side by side is C. By the way, Braille also played music. All of Paris went to his concerts. He played cello and organ. But I have my exam in a week. If I end up failing, we’ll be leaving you. I just feel sorry for Mirra Alexandrovna. For some reason she thinks I’m going to be a great musician. Poor, silly mama! I can’t make her understand that the sensitive ear characteristic of every blind person isn’t enough, that that sensitivity doesn’t mean musical ability and true talent is as rare among the blind as among the seeing. I once heard my professor tell someone, “A pointless undertaking, doesn’t have the hands or the feeling. But I’m still hatching. I have kids at home asking for food. I have three, dear.” When we get home, I’m going to get a job as a piano tuner, that’s good, too. If Fate smiles on me, I’ll marry some kind blind girl. What else does happiness require? Normal young women only marry blind men in novels, Evgenia Dmitrievna. And if they do, it’s out of ignorance. To tell you the truth, blind people are awful, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Spoiled, capricious, wronged, vindictive. The blind man’s subordination in human contact is almost continuous; he doesn’t choose his companion, who is whoever wants to be it. The constant dependence is humiliating and has a putrefying effect on the psyche. Egoism and vanity are the main motives for human actions; all that gets magnified exponentially for the blind. The blind man’s vanity is fueled by the exaggerated admiration the seeing express for him out of pity for the cripple. The blind man is always in someone else’s power, so he can’t help but be suspicious, mistrustful, and vindictive. Marrying a blind man is like sacrificing yourself, only the sacrifice is thankless. People won’t understand you anyway. They’ll pity you and sympathize, as if you’d gone into a convent or become a nurse aide. And you won’t be able to explain. So that everything’s going to turn out just fine, Evgenia Dmitrievna. You’ll see.

Zhenya dear, have you gone to bed? Are you asleep? Roman’s going to play a little, just a little, all right? Please forgive us. His exam is soon, and that will be it. The professor said Roman has great talent, that he’ll be a great success. He needs to work. He needs to study hard. Preparing for a performance is very difficult. He has to read the line with one hand and play with the other. Roman is very worried. He puts on a good face and pretends he doesn’t care, but in fact he’s afraid. If he doesn’t get in, Zhenya, it will be a terrible blow for him. Not just a blow—a disaster. You do understand. In his position it is so important to find a place in life, to be essential to someone. Today I’m here, I’m always by his side, but tomorrow he’s alone. How will he live? Who needs him? I think about this all the time, Zhenya. Lord, you look so much like your mama! You know, I should tell you one thing. It’s silly, of course, not worth mentioning, and your dear mama’s long gone, but I can’t get the idea out of my head of how I deceived her. I mean, it wasn’t really a deception, but still. She asked me to sew her a dress, and I promised. We came up with the idea together: a low back and a heart-shaped slit in front. Rustling taffeta with bell sleeves and a full ruffle. Imagine, chiffon ribbons from the fastening on the left and from the side seam on the right tied up in back in a bow. A dream, not a dress. She’d already bought everything: the taffeta, the buttons. I took the material home. You saw me off. You were funny. You said, “Aunt Mika, bring me a wooly-booly!” I promised to bring the dress by her birthday. But I was having so much trouble with Roman, I never got around to the dress. There was never time. I kept putting it off. Of course, I didn’t get it done, and it was time to go. I arrived, I was crying, and I lied that I only remembered on the train—I’d ironed the finished dress, folded it, and forgotten to pack it. She was so upset! Naturally, I would have finished the dress later, but that last time your mama turned up all of a sudden, without warning. She appeared on my doorstep and my first thought was, The dress! But she didn’t remember. Something had happened between her and Dmitry. Or maybe nothing had, she just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know how she stood it all. They’d just got married, and he was already very strange. He wouldn’t speak to her for days on end. He’d sit there looking at the wall. I asked, “What’s the matter with him?” But this made her uncomfortable. She smiled and replied, “Pay no attention. Every person needs a wall sometimes.” I didn’t understand their marriage at all. They didn’t know the first thing about each other. Your mother married him in a frenzy. One day she was trying to convince me that Dmitry was an animal, a lewd pig, a narcissistic nonentity, and the next she announced she was getting married. I said, “Are you out of your mind?” She shook her head. “Don’t ask. I know nothing. And I don’t want to.” Mitya didn’t just not love her, it was as if he were taking something out on her. Even having outsiders in the house didn’t stop them. In my presence there were scenes between them at night that would end with Mitya taking the featherbed and going to the kitchen. She’d burst in and shout that she wouldn’t let him treat her this way, that she was putting up with it for the child’s sake, there was a limit to everything, and she would make him listen to her. But Mitya would interrupt her. “Pipe down, you’ll wake Zhenya!” You would wake up and cry, and your father would pick you up. I would try to calm her down, but she was already hysterical. “You don’t need me, I’m just in your way, you need the child, but you hate me! So know this. You won’t have me or Zhenya!” I kept saying, “Leave him! This won’t end well!” But she put up with it, she was waiting for something. At breakfast she would start poking her fork in the butter and could spend half an hour doing that, an hour. It occurred to me that she was quietly losing her mind. On my last visits her feelings toward you seemed to have changed. The slightest thing irritated her. The minute you acted up at the table, she’d start shouting, smacking you in the face, and pinching you so hard she’d leave bruises. You would cry, of course, and she would hit you even harder. “Quiet! Be quiet!” Then she’d clutch her head, cover her ears, and run away. One time you put on her hat, gloves, and shoes, draped yourself in her beads, took her rings, and smeared on her lipstick—and she lunged at you with a bamboo ski pole from your kiddie skis. We barely got her arms twisted behind her back that time.

I found out you’d arrived, my kind Alexei Pavlovich, and rushed off to the vivarium like a woman possessed. I made my way there as if sleepwalking, not myself, which was why I knew I was just about to see you, and suddenly a degenerate old cesspit of a woman approached me at a streetcar stop. She had blue prison tattoos on her arms and even her forehead. She wanted me to buy withered roses from her—lifted, obviously, from the statue of Gogol on the boulevard. “Buy them, girlie,” she wheedled, “for good luck. You’ll see, they’ll come back to life.” What did I do? I gave her a ruble, which the crone doubtless spent on drink, and immediately I felt that the witch, who stank of prison, had not in fact misled me and I was perfectly happy. Fool that I am, at that minute, at that stop, I would have happily died before the streetcar came. I stood and smiled, not in my right mind, and kept bringing the wilted fragrance to my nostrils and sniffing. When I arrived, some people were there. You were angry, excited, not yourself. You were shouting that they were all idlers and thieves, that you couldn’t leave for a minute, that you knew everything: they were feeding the dogs dog meat, and you knew where the meat allotted for them was going. For a long time you couldn’t calm down, you kept snatching walnuts from the bag left over from the monkeys, squeezing three at a time, and the walnuts cracked, shooting off rotten dust. You started in again about how the nuts were dog shit, not nuts. Then someone came to see you and I slipped out because I didn’t want to see you like that. They were drowning puppies there. Having nothing to do to keep me busy, I started helping. I’d pour water into the bucket, toss in the pups, and insert a second bucket into the first, also filled with water. I walked past the croaking jugs again for the umpteenth time, between the stands of trays where the white, sharp-clawed blobs bred faster than they could be done in. The dogs would quiet down and then the howling would start up from all the cages. Finally we were alone. I said, “Thanks for the postcard.” You pretended you didn’t know what I was talking about. “What postcard?” You held me in your arms and started kissing me. I asked whether you believed that we’d have to answer for all our actions on Judgment Day, and you said, “Let’s go before someone else shows up.” You pulled me by the arm, and we crawled into the farthest dog cage, where we put down straw. From directly above us came the barking of crazed canines trying to poke their snouts through the bars and sputtering spit. The sight of bloody cotton wool bothered you. You mumbled, “Zhenya, this can’t be good.” I objected, “It’s fine.” I reached under your shirt and ran my hands over your back and shoulders, feeling the tiny moles. You startled a few times—you kept thinking someone was coming. When they did come from the department to pick up frogs, you had a pleased look on your face, that you’d had time. I said in parting, “I’m going to go to your house to pay Vera Lvovna a visit. Say hello for me.” You mumbled, frightened, “Zhenya, I beg of you, don’t. Don’t come! I can’t take it when you’re together. It’s awful for me.” At home, at dinner, I upset the sauceboat by accident and it all spilled in Mika’s lap. She jumped up, waved her arms around, wailed about how I’d ruined her suit on purpose because I always did everything to be mean, because God created me bad and ugly, with a face to stop a clock, and now here I was having my revenge for being an unattractive nobody. I said that Mika was trash because she wanted to marry my father and I was in the way. My father jumped up and slapped my cheek. I said, “I hate you all!” and ran out. I wanted ice cream but I had to make do with snow. Braille isn’t nearly as clever as it seems at first glance. Here, this is about me and you:

Zhenya, is that you? Alexei Pavlovich isn’t here. How good you’ve come! I’ve missed you. This is just how it is, Zhenya. Healthy and pretty, everyone needed me, but I’ve grown fat and old, and now that I’ve got this horrible-looking face and missing parts as well, no one gives me the time of day. Don’t think I’m hurt. What for? You weren’t the one who thought this up and neither was I. We’re not the first and we won’t be the last. As if I haven’t known for five years that one day they’d bury my body. In Yalta people kept asking me, “Why are you so cheerful?” I said, “Just look at that!” A magician there kept pulling a ribbon from his nose. I laughed till I dropped. They looked at me as if I were nuts. But I pitied them all for not laughing. They didn’t think it was funny because they didn’t understand something important. But I did.

Verochka Lvovna, tell me about my mama.

Your mama loved candy. Mitya brought her over to meet us, and I put a box of Viennese pralines on the table, a huge one, tub-size—and she ate half the box. But that’s not the point, Zhenya. The point is that your father loved one woman very much. But she didn’t. It happens. She liked it that way. She—how can I put this—toyed with him. It flattered her that he suffered so over her. She didn’t even marry just anyone but his friend. And then when Mitya married the first girl to come along, he came to his senses. That happens, too, Zhenya. You’ll see for yourself.

Verochka Lvovna, why are you lying?

Why indeed? You should always tell the truth. That woman was me, Zhenya. All those years your father and I would meet. And your mama knew about it. I told her all about it. But that namby-pamby, that Little Gray Neck, only whimpered. She asked, “What did I ever do to all of you? What?”

I’m going.

Go. Only listen to what else I have to say. In Yalta I realized why I’m not afraid. Everyone’s afraid, but I’m not. Because I loved your father my whole life. I still do. I even wanted to write him about it. But I never did. Or rather, I sent a blank card. It’s silly, of course. It never arrived, it got lost somewhere. I say this and I’m lying again because I’m afraid anyway. And also. You and Alexei Pavlovich could at least have waited until I croaked. Or do you think I don’t see?

I don’t care, Vera Lvovna. I don’t believe in God and I smell of apple soap.

My handsome, intelligent, inimitable, delightful, prickly, unlucky Alexei Pavlovich, by the power of imagination invested in me I’ll make you who you are because I want to. Your hair is falling out, tufts of it get left in your comb. Your skin is getting flabby and wrinkled. You’re developing a soft, almost feminine belly. After four flights of stairs now you have to catch your breath. You can’t see close up, you’re afraid of glasses, and you read holding the book at arm’s length. Your soiled and chalk-stained jacket hanging on a nail in the classroom by the board automatically spreads its sunlight-reflecting elbows. In the bathroom I scrub your mangled name off the walls. You’re ordinary and not that smart. Remember how we started telling our fortunes out of boredom? Your page, my line. We got: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” You said, “We’ll find a rope, but where are we going to get the stone?” I made-believe I was tightening a noose and stuck my tongue out to the side. We burst out laughing. You and I. You’re a silly man. After all, I was the one who needed the millstone. You were one of the little ones. And now, like a foolish child, you think someone’s angry at you for something, but you don’t understand what, and you’re lost in speculation as to why people avoid you, you’re looking for explanations, seeking out meetings, even writing notes that really don’t become you. You’re ridiculous and repulsive both. You pulled an underhanded trick, announcing loudly in front of everyone that I should come by your lab after the lecture. I came and became the unwilling heroine of an extremely vulgar scene. I didn’t even realize at first that you were asking my forgiveness for the row of our lesser brothers preserved in alcohol with their guts hanging out. You started trying to convince me that you still loved me and that the lack of attention and caresses was simply out of sensible caution because no one should know anything before it was time. “We have to keep a low profile, Zhenya,” you explained. “You have to be patient.” I said all I needed was purity and I left. As it turned out, you didn’t understand anything. And now this awful yesterday. Or maybe, on the contrary, you did understand and that’s why it all happened like that. Kind Alexei Pavlovich, do you even remember what happened? You showed up at my father’s birthday totally drunk. You wouldn’t let anyone get a word in and badgered everyone about what a remarkable father and worthy man he was and poured yourself shot after shot. You pestered Roman to play. The poor boy didn’t know where to hide, but you sat next to him, put your arm around him, and wouldn’t let him go. You shouted in his ear, “Roman, do you think you’re the blind musician? Silly! It’s him!” He lifted a forkful of herring toward the ceiling and the sauce dripped down his fingers into his sleeve. “Him! He pounds on us like keys, like this and this!” Mika jumped up. “What are you talking about! You don’t even know what you’re babbling!” I went to my room and lay down so I wouldn’t have to see or hear you. You knocked on the door. I thought it was my father, but it was you. You collapsed to your knees and started kissing my feet and exclaiming that you couldn’t go on like this, that you would throw her on the garbage heap, that you had no one and nothing in life but me. I said, “Go away! Get out!” You kept trying to kiss me and I kicked you away. You fell to the floor. They ran into the room. My father dragged you to the front door. You were laughing, trying to break away, and repeating over and over, “Thinking pistil! Thinking pistil!”

There is a famous phenomenon, recovered sight, Evgenia Dmitrievna, described back in the eighteenth century. Someone blind from birth who acquires vision after an operation thinks that the objects he sees are touching his eyes. He can’t judge distance and misses when he tries to grab a door knob. They show him a sphere and a cube. But he can only tell what they are by feeling them. Amusing, isn’t it?

Here I am writing you one last letter, kind Alexei Pavlovich, which, like the ones before, you will never receive. Any novel, no matter how short, should have an epilogue. Nothing happened, it’s just that your Zhenya changed. This different Zhenya came home one fine day and found a tear-stained Mika sitting there. Zhenya asked, “What happened?” Silly question. Zhenya knew full well that Roman had taken the exam and failed. Zhenya stood by the window in her room for a while, watching the little boys in the courtyard taking turns blowing into an empty bottle, and then she went into Roman’s room. He was sitting like a statue. Zhenya started reassuring him and said that it didn’t matter, it was all silly, because that wasn’t what was most important. “What’s most important,” Zhenya said, “is that I love you. I’ll be your wife, we’ll go away from here, and we’ll just live.” She started kissing his face, eyelids, and forehead, but he had a fever. They took his temperature—he was burning up. They put him to bed. They called the doctor without waiting for my father. Pneumonia. How? Why? Mika and I sat with him that night, together. Roman mumbled something in his fever. Then fell asleep. Zhenya asked, “You don’t believe me?” Mika answered, “I do. Roman loves you very much, Zhenechka. And I know that you can make him happy. Only I’m afraid you’ll bring him grief.” But Zhenya said, “Whether you believe me or not, I love your son and I’ll do everything I can to make things good for him. If only you knew how happy I am right now!” Zhenya sat at his bedside day and night, spoon-fed him, gave him his medicine, sponged off his sweating body, changed his sheets, and took him to the bathroom. She and Mika discussed what kind of wedding they would have. Zhenya wanted it all to be very quiet—first church and straight home, and there only their closest friends and a simple supper. “Yes yes, Zhenya dear,” Mika agreed. “We’ll do everything your way.”

How frightening to wake up without you here, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Here I am holding your hand, and I still can’t believe it’s true. My beloved, my one and only Zhenya, how well you put it then: we’ll get there and just live. You’ll be my better half, my spare rib, my God-bestowed wife, and I’ll stuff myself on pears.

Before going to the train station, we all sat quietly for a minute. The streetcar outside set the bookcase glass to shaking.

You got all the way downstairs and had to go back.

“The gingerbread! We forgot the gingerbread!”

Cottonwood puffs swept even through the front door.

We arrived at the station early; they’d just brought the train up.

My father flicked a puff off his sweaty face and shielded himself from the sun with a newspaper.

Quickly, get in quickly, it’s about to move, any minute now. The train sailed past the Andronikov Monastery, whipped by the oncoming wind.

Would you like me to tell you what’s out the window right now? Can’t you feel it when the knocking of the wheels changes? First we were going over an embankment, now we’re in a hollow. Going down and down. Look, what did I tell you? A tunnel.”

At a station where we waited an hour, a garbage can was smoking.

You can feel the heat subsiding. Zhenya, Roman, let’s have dinner. In the morning we’ll be home.

The paperclip Roman used to mark his place in his book had gone missing.

Where are you going, Zhenya? It’s only a five-minute stop.

I’m going to stretch my legs. Don’t worry, I have time.

They were selling cherries and steaming potatoes on the platform. Out of a big kettle, so when the lid was lifted, steam spilled out.

Mika poked her head out the window, waved, and smiled.

Zhenya, it’s time. Or you’ll be left behind.

It’s all right, Aunt Mika, there’s still time.

The train blew its whistle and was enveloped in steam like a potato. The cars jerked in a chain. Slowly, Mika started moving.

Zhenya, what does this mean? Zhenya, how can this be?

The suitcases, Aunt Mika! Send my suitcases!

What about Roman? How could you? How could you?

She returned the next morning, but she didn’t go home. She went there.

She opened up with the same key. It was dark in the entry. She turned on the light. Hanging on the coatrack was the same coat with the mother of pearl buttons. She grabbed one and pulled hard. The button flew apart. She tore another off, taking fabric with it.

Alexei Pavlovich came out of the bathroom with bare, wet arms.

Zhenya? What happened? Vera Lvovna’s here washing…What’s the matter with you?

Everything’s fine. There is no light or dark.

What?

Let’s go.

She took him by the hand and led him into his room.

What’s wrong with you?

She fell on the bed.

Something heavy slapped on the bathroom floor.

She held him tightly, squeezed him with all her might, held her palms hard to his shuddering, bumpy back.

She began to laugh, drinking in life.