Jacob's Ladder

9 Admirers

(1975–1976)

Andrei Ivanovich had been ill with pneumonia for the whole autumn and into the winter, and Amalia Alexandrovna spent that time nursing him back to health. Thus, it turned out that the first family member to visit the newborn was Genrikh. He came over with his wife, the kindly, talkative Irina. They came bearing presents and provisions. Irina’s name did not suit her in the least. In Nora’s estimation, an “Irina” should be fragile, slender, and slightly angular. This woman was a sort of gentle, unbridled bear, with a somewhat bulbous nose and a soft pouch instead of a chin. She could have been a Domna, or a Xavroniya—or so thought Nora.

This time, the presents were all the very things she needed: a miniature swing set, and a squishy, oversized teddy bear that resembled Irina just a bit. Yurik, in fact, adored the teddy bear, and two years later began calling it Bearfriend. It was one of his first words.

Nora’s father usually gave her things that were exceptional in their uselessness—a set of baking forms for making cookies of various shapes, or a set of knives that could only have been wielded by the market butcher. Once, completely out of the blue, he gave her a hat made of silver-fox fur, which Nora immediately donated to the theater.

The food that her father brought from the delicatessen shop at the Prague Restaurant was, as usual, delicious. Grandmother Marusya herself had loved to indulge in treats from this delicatessen, and surprised her granddaughter with pâté in tiny fluted pastry cups, or fish gleaming under a coat of aspic, transparent as ice. Irina desperately wanted to tickle and squeeze the baby, but she pulled back her hands under Nora’s cold gaze, and cooed at him from afar. Yurik looked at her, astonished, but Nora was glad: Clever boy! Blood is thicker than water.

Genrikh didn’t venture to touch, but examined the child attentively, with obvious approval: “He definitely takes after our side of the family—round head, big ears. And such a tiny little mouth.”

Nora, somewhat disappointed, was forced to agree. Some of Genrikh’s features revealed themselves like the play of shadows in Yurik’s tiny face.

Amalia showed up a month and a half after that—with Andrei Ivanovich, of course. Even before she had taken off her coat, she hugged Nora and immediately started crying. She wept openly, with childlike tears.

“Forgive me, daughter! I’m so sorry. We couldn’t make it until now. But I know you understand; you always do, my clever one.”

Nora understood. From the moment Andrei Ivanovich had appeared in their lives, Nora had understood, though she was not yet ten years old. When he visited them at home for the first time, she had felt that his face was already familiar. She had noticed him when he stood on Nikitsky Boulevard, observing her and her mother going out for a stroll, or when he was there to rush her to Filatov Hospital after an attack of appendicitis, or when he met her and Mama coming out of the theater and walked home behind them like a shadow, so that he could spend twenty fleeting minutes with his beloved Amalia. Her mother only rarely turned back and smiled at him—and for the sake of this brief smile, he would tell his wife a little lie, break free, and fly to the theater to catch a glimpse of them as they left to go home. What other lover was capable of such devotion?

Growing up, Nora experienced a multitude of emotions toward this stern, serious, wiry man—jealousy, deep irritation, admiration, and confused love. He stood behind her mother in his customary stance of protector, prepared to intervene at a moment’s notice, to beat off any attack, to fend off anyone who dared insult her. Even when she embraced her mother, Nora couldn’t shed her sense of having been betrayed, her feeling that her mother had abandoned her, her only daughter. Amalia so loved her Andrei that she damaged her other great love—her daughter.

And now Amalia was crying. So she, too, understood. It wasn’t right. Not during the last weeks of Nora’s pregnancy or during the first days after Nora brought the tiny creature home with her had Amalia been there. The old scores, never yet revealed, were poised in her mind as she stroked the back of her mother’s woolen coat. Andrei Ivanovich stood behind her with a look of guilt. Throughout his illness, he had urged Amalia to go to Moscow, but she couldn’t bear to leave him behind, alone and sick, in the country. Now Nora’s mother was shedding hot tears, and Nora passed her palm over her mother’s knitted cap again and again and felt sadness, and envy, and was filled with a sense of superiority, because she was not that way—she would not have cried.

Nora helped her mother unbutton her coat, but Andrei Ivanovich dashed over, grabbed the coat, and, crouching down on his knees, unbuckled her boots and placed house slippers on the floor in front of her. While he was doing this, Amalia mechanically smoothed down the sparse hairs on top of his bent, balding head. His hands moved up one of her calves and stroked her knee surreptitiously. Nora saw this out of the corner of her eye.

There were times when indignation at the impropriety of this constant fondling scorched Nora like fire. This attraction, this unwaning passion for each other of people no longer young, irritated her.

It’s jealousy speaking in me, Nora thought, bringing herself up short. I should be ashamed.

Nora was pitiless to everyone, not least to herself.

Her mother wiped off her tears with the back of her hand. “Well, then, show me my grandson.”

Nora led the way. From the doorway of the room they could see a little white crib and a baby, lying on his tummy, face turned toward the people entering.

“Oh my goodness! What a beautiful little boy,” Amalia said.

She lifted him deftly from the crib, pressed him to her chest, and began snuffling him, patting him gently on his little back.

“What sweetness, Nora! When you stop breast-feeding him, we’ll take him, won’t we, Andrei? Shall we? Clean air, goat’s milk, freshly picked berries from the forest. The new apple trees in the orchard have started bearing fruit,” she began exultantly, confidently, but then she slowed down, anticipating Nora’s reaction. “Well, Andrei, here we are, already old enough to have our own grandchildren.”

Andrei Ivanovich was a man of few words; moreover, he stuttered. The only one he didn’t stutter with was his beloved Amalia. She passed the little fellow over to her husband. He held him in one arm, his other arm circled around his wife.

They aren’t even that old; they look like they’re still in their forties. Strange, strange person—very attractive, a man’s man, and he’s blushing; I can understand why my mother fell for him. What a couple. They were meant for each other; it was almost fated. Just like Tengiz and me. Only Tengiz isn’t Andrei; they’re cut from different cloth altogether. This one looks youthful; his light hair doesn’t show any gray. Tengiz turned gray early, and he’s aging early. Andrei Ivanovich almost looks younger than Tengiz, though he’s at least twenty years older. And they’re both from the country. They grew up on the land, Nora thought.

They resembled a sculptural composition: Mama and Andrei with the baby between them, their eyes fixed on the little one. Well, after all, why not? She could actually send the boy to live with them for the summer when he got a bit bigger.

This was the first time Nora allowed herself to consider the possibility of leaving her son with her mother. Then she recalled something she had long ago forgotten—what a lively and cheerful companion Amalia had been in her childhood! She was funny and animated, and all Nora’s friends envied her. Mama had been the best of friends to her. Later, of course, it was Grandmother Marusya, but in a completely different way. Though a boy needs a man around most of all … And Andrei Ivanovich would be just the sort of man he’d need: a former soldier, a woodsman, a handyman, whether building a house or digging a well. Yes, a boy needs a father, of course. Or at least some sort of man in his life. Well, Vitya would never do, that was obvious.

After they left, Nora made a sketch of them. It turned out well. While she was drawing them from memory, she realized that when they had first met they had still been quite young—not much older than Nora was now. Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine? They could have had their own child. Something hadn’t worked out. At first Amalia had thought about the pros and cons of having a child without a husband. Andrei Ivanovich couldn’t get divorced for a long time, waiting for his children to grow up. When the children did grow up, they didn’t want to see him again after the divorce; they couldn’t forgive him his treachery. Yes, they might try to grab Yurik now and take him away from her. Nora felt a surge of jealousy again—she was not going to give up what was hers—and again she stopped herself. You’re being possessive, Nora; that’s not a good thing. A child needs to have lots of people around who love him. Let them love him.

By the time he was one year old, Yurik had met all his close relatives. It was only then that Vitya managed to visit him for the first time. By this time, he had grown used to the fact that Nora had given birth to a child, and that the child was his son. It was difficult for Vitya to accept this fact, partly because, while their child was changing from a clump of cells into a disc, stretching out, elongating, growing new tissue and the rudiments of organs, Vitya himself was sunk into depression. When Nora’s belly became convincing, she invited her husband over to announce the imminent advent of the child. Vitya responded to this information with deep inner protest: he was categorically and irrevocably against it. His own life seemed to him to be so tormented and tangled up that he had no wish to bring another suffering creature like himself into the world. Moreover, he considered Nora’s behavior to be morally objectionable. How could she have taken such a step without warning him beforehand?

He was right, but she had no intention of taking his objections seriously. She had cured herself of the illness of love, which had been, moreover, barren in the biological sense. The birth of a child seemed to her to be a reasonable solution to the problem, and she simply didn’t take Vitya into account in the matter. She did not count on him to be a father in the fullest sense of the word—just a seed bearer.

Vitya was offended and hurt. These were perhaps the strongest emotions he had felt for Nora during the long history of their sporadic relationship. That entire year was singularly difficult for Vitya. He spent three months receiving treatment in a psychiatric clinic. When he left the clinic, he was even less sociable, and considerably plumper. The doctors, however, considered the period of danger to have passed.

The call from Nora inviting him to his son’s birthday took him by surprise. He was so taken aback that he informed his mother about it. Varvara Vasilievna, with her complicated and wholly negative feelings about his “so-called wife,” immediately jumped to conclusions: Nora had given birth to another man’s child, and she now wanted to collect child support from Vitya. Nevertheless, she did express a desire to go with Vitya to see her “so-called grandson.”

Vitya did not accept Varvara’s hypothesis, but they went together to see Yurik anyway.

Vitya himself was incapable of deception. His weighty cognitive apparatus, in many ways exceeding the endowments of ordinary people, was unable to register certain simple things—lies, cunning, self-interest.

Nora prepared well for the visit of her husband and mother-in-law. She washed the floors in the apartment, bought Vitya’s favorite cake, and dressed Yurik in velvet trousers that she had refashioned from a cast-off garment of her own. Varvara Vasilievna had contemplated for a long time whether to go see the baby—wondering whether or not it would be good for Vitya. She took out her tarot deck to help her decide, and the cards read a resounding yes.

Nora was forewarned that Vitya would be coming with his mother. She did not anticipate that any good would come of the visit, but decided that, in and of itself, a visit signified the victory of her indifference over poor Varvara’s long-standing hatred of her.

The relatives were about an hour late. Yurik stood in the doorway of the nursery and swayed slightly, preparing to toddle over toward the guests in greeting. Vitya almost completely blocked the doorway, so it was hard for Varvara Vasilievna to see around him. Nora was shocked by Vitya’s appearance: the unhealthy pallor of his immobile face, his heaviness, his withdrawn demeanor. A sense of pity rose up in her: Poor thing, he really is ill … Awful. Could she be partly to blame for this? Like Varvara, she had for many years dismissed the idea that Vitya suffered from mental illness; but now it seemed obvious.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” Vitya said slowly, and held out a large, plump hand. Yurik started crying; he had never seen such huge hands, or such huge people. Vitya, no less frightened than Yurik, took a few steps backward. Varvara came to the rescue and held out a little red fire engine to Yurik. Nora had not yet given Yurik any cars. This was the first one he had seen in his life—and it was such a beauty! Nora kept her surprise to herself; she hadn’t expected her mother-in-law to make such an entirely brilliant choice.

Yurik calmed down immediately. He clutched the toy, banged it against the floor, and very soon discovered its wonderful metal wheels. He made them spin, then tried to stick the toy in his mouth. Varvara was alarmed: “Nora, he wants to eat it!”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Nora said soothingly. “He’s cutting teeth. He keeps trying to scratch his gums. Give him some time to get used to you; then he’ll come up to you by himself. Coffee? Tea?”

Varvara glanced around her daughter-in-law’s apartment, taking it in little by little. The apartment seemed none too clean by her standards, but very cultured. Throughout all these years, she had only seen her daughter-in-law two or three times, and she had been under the impression that her family was not well off. Now she realized that Nora’s family was most likely gentry. She always made this distinction: either ordinary people, or gentry. Tea was served not in the kitchen but in the living room, which resembled a dining room, with its small oval table and closed sideboard. A real one, not Czech-manufactured … The tea set was old porcelain; the spoons were silver. The cake was removed from its cardboard box and placed on a round plate, with a serving utensil lying beside it. In the next room, the baby banged away with the toy fire engine and gurgled with pleasure.

They ate cake and drank tea. Nora put another piece of cake on Vitya’s plate. He ate it impassively, if rather quickly. Nora took Yurik by his little hand and led him to the table. The boy looked cautiously at Vitya, but Vitya paid no attention to him. Varvara began to get nervous: This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. They shouldn’t have come. And she shouldn’t have let Vitya come. But she still hoped that the boy would be able to penetrate Vitya’s leaden indifference. Alas, it was no use.

For almost the first time in her life, Nora was thinking the same thing as her mother-in-law. How Vitya had changed! He was, of course, a genius—but he was a sick one. This could not be denied. What guarantee was there that her son had inherited his genius and not his illness? Or both at the same time? But what could she do? It hadn’t happened with Tengiz, and with Vitya it had happened at the drop of a hat, without any grueling, long-term practice.

Vitya finished all his cake. By now, Yurik had taken an interest in Vitya’s shoe and was trying to drive the fire engine along it. Varvara pushed the plate with the cake on it away from her son. He didn’t take the hint.

Varvara began to get ready to leave. She thanked Nora, and praised the little one: “He’s a fine baby.”

When they were descending the stairs, she repeated it, to her son this time.

“He’s a fine baby. Too bad he’s not ours.”

“What do you mean by that?” Vitya asked.

“Well, just that Nora has a fine baby, but it isn’t yours.”

After a long pause, Vitya said, “What difference does that make, Mama?”

Varvara stood still, astonished. “What do you mean, what difference does it make?”

“Theoretically speaking, it doesn’t matter to me. Practically speaking, there are methods of determining paternity nowadays.”

And Vitya didn’t say another word until they reached home. As they were entering the building, he said, “I liked the cake.”