Jacob's Ladder

30 Endings

(1988–1989)

Nora had known for a long time already that no year ever ended uneventfully. The last weeks of December always brought surprises—both good and bad—as though all the events that were supposed to happen during the course of the year ran out of time and piled up in a heap during these pre–New Year’s days. On December 16, Taisia came over with a box of chocolates and a huge bale, out of which she pulled a checked blanket clearly of Scottish provenance. While Nora was still blinking in astonishment, Taisia dexterously put the teakettle on to boil.

It had already been two years since she left Nora’s and returned home. After two years of red tape and other ordeals, Lena had finally received a visa to go to Argentina and was now living in a small town in Mendoza Province, where her swarthy husband worked as an engineer in a winery—something his impoverished family in Buenos Aires couldn’t even dream of. Taisia had received twelve letters in two years from her daughter—strange, incomprehensible letters, from which she could derive only one thing: that Lena wasn’t dancing the tango in Argentina. Six months earlier, a letter arrived that made things absolutely clear: Lena was expecting a baby, and she wanted her mother to come help her out in the first months. It was astonishing that Taisia, who was usually a chatterbox, had never said a word to Nora about this invitation. Taisia had received her visitor’s visa, printed on fancy paper covered with official stamps, from the Argentinian consulate, had bought a ticket without saying a word, and two days before her departure had come to inform Nora about it. The chocolates and the blanket were, thus, goodbye presents, and Nora, bewildered, ate two sickly-sweet chocolates in a row; they seemed to stick in her throat. She couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Taisia, whom she considered to be a straightforward, trustworthy person, had so deceived her. It was as though she had now discovered a hidden layer in Taisia, some inexplicable insidiousness in her behavior, a completely unwarranted furtiveness.

Nora still couldn’t bring herself to ask the question that most perplexed her: why did Taisia conceal her plans for so long, why did she wait until two days before the departure to tell Nora about it? Afraid she would start to cry from hurt and confusion, Nora got up and went over to her desk, where she began rooting around in a drawer. She took an unattractive gold ring with faceted alexandrite that had belonged to Grandmother Zinaida out of a little wooden box and placed it in front of Taisia—a memento. Taisia put it on her finger and burst into tears.

“Oh, Nora … But it’s gold! And it fits perfectly. You won’t regret it? But I shouldn’t really take it … It’s so valuable!” She took it off, and put it on again. And smiled, and wiped her nose, and went to kiss Nora.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without you and Yurik, Nora.”

Get lost, Nora thought. You’re such a fake.

Out loud she said, “When are you coming back?”

“Soon, soon. I’ll only be gone for three months,” Taisia said.

Nora’s project with Tengiz was pending; all her plans were falling through.

Maybe I should have Mama come stay for a few weeks, Nora thought.

She didn’t have time to ask her. Not two days had passed since Taisia’s departure when Andrei Ivanovich dropped by. He was alone, without Amalia. Nora immediately sensed something was amiss. And it was worse than she could ever have suspected.

Amalia had cancer.

“Where is the tumor?”

“It’s … everywhere. They didn’t find just one tumor. It’s all over. She’s … she’s on her way here. She just went to the hairdresser.”

Andrei Ivanovich choked up. He was pale, and his hands trembled. Nora sat silently, designing a set for the immediate future in her mind. She would prepare Amalia’s old room for her and drag in the old bed, call the plumber right away to repair all the faucets and the toilet tank, free up the one-door wardrobe for her mother’s belongings, buy some potted plants—the way Mama loved it. She didn’t get any further than that in building her plans, because an indescribable nightmare loomed. She would have to tell Yurik. Poor thing, he loved both of them so much. Sometimes it seemed he didn’t love anyone but them. Nora thought about the dogs that her mother would probably want to bring here with her. Then she stopped herself.

“Andrei Ivanovich, maybe they made a mistake?”

“No, there’s no mistake. It has already—what’s it called?—metastasized. I can feel myself that things are bad with her. Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder: Why her? Why not me? I would give anything if I could trade places with her.”

Soon Amalia arrived, with a traditional flowery shawl over her head, her nails painted red. Nora stared at her in astonishment: it was the first time in her life she had ever seen her mother wearing nail polish. She was a first-rate draftsman; long fingernails were considered inappropriate in her profession. Amalia started laughing.

“Nora, I realized that I couldn’t appear before the doctor with hands looking the way they did. They’d think I was a cook or a housepainter and not offer me the proper treatment.”

Was this a case of extreme self-possession, or simple incomprehension?

“Mama, move back home with me. You are officially registered at this address. The municipal hospitals are better, after all. Tusya’s cousin runs the department at the Herzen Institute; we can arrange for you to get treated there.”

“I’ve already thought about it. I understand the situation, of course, dear. They were about to suggest I get treated out where we live, in the country, not here where I am registered. But we’ve already been to the municipal oncology clinic, and they gave me a referral.” Amalia began to rummage through her purse, but Nora stopped her.

“How do you feel, though? Are you in pain?”

“You won’t believe it, but I just had a sore throat—I thought it was tonsillitis. I kept gargling, and gargling. I felt it on one side, as usually happens with tonsillitis. But it kept hurting and wouldn’t get better. I thought maybe it was my tooth; I’ve had problems with it on that side of my mouth for a long time now. Then my glands swelled up—here, take a look.” And she moved aside her scarf, which had been tied in a jaunty bow.

How sweet and youthful she was! But she was already over seventy. The hair at her temples had only just started turning gray, and it was growing out in tight little ringlets. She was still pretty; she had almost no wrinkles on her face. Only her neck betrayed her age—it was crepey and lined. She had lost weight in the last half year, and this suited her. Nora was suddenly overcome by such a strong rush of love for her—she had never felt anything like it. It was like water bursting out of a tap. Or fog covering a mountain. Or a downpour on a quiet day.

“Did Andrei tell you? Today the doctor told me an operation wasn’t necessary. I thought they’d just cut it out and that would be it. She says that I have to consult some professor or other, and that chemotherapy is the best way to go. It’s more effective, you see.”

Amalia stayed overnight, and Andrei Ivanovich went home to feed the dogs.

And so Amalia returned home, to the place she had lived since she was born. For Nora, a new life began. She spent a lot of time with her mother, but now things were different from before. Amalia was like an honored guest at Nora’s house. Andrei Ivanovich came every day and stayed for an hour or two, having spent six or eight hours on the road.

Nora drove her mother around to her doctors’ appointments. Amalia was quiet and submissive. Her eyes looked anxious, and her movements were uncertain. She no longer laughed out loud at the slightest provocation. Nora missed this almost gratuitous laughter, which had so irritated her before.

A month later, Amalia was admitted to the hospital. Now Nora brought her soup and pomegranates, watching her mother grow weaker and more diminished from one day to the next, becoming more and more like a frightened child. Andrei Ivanovich found homes for the dogs, got rid of the horse, and moved in with Nora.

Now Nora spent less time at the hospital. She saw how her mother perked up when Andrei Ivanovich entered the ward, and felt the old jealousy that she had experienced as a child. Then the doctors sent Amalia home—to give her a break from the treatment, as they said. She started feeling better. It turned out that the chemotherapy had not helped at all; her blood was destroyed, but the doctors insisted that she continue with this sadistic treatment. They prescribed a very expensive foreign drug called vincristine, which Tengiz managed to get hold of in Germany. He was in Düsseldorf to stage The Death of Tarelkin, a production Nora had dreamed up and designed, though she had been unable to accompany Tengiz.

The love fest between Amalia, dying of a fatal disease, and Andrei Ivanovich, helpless to do anything to prevent it, played out in the next room, behind a tightly closed door. The door to the second bedroom was also constantly closed, but from it escaped snatches of melodies that Nora was already sick of—Beatles, and more Beatles. She already knew every song by heart, both text and melody, because Yurik sang them all, imitating now Lennon, now McCartney. Fairly accurate renditions. Nora asked her mother one day whether the music disturbed her.

“What music?” she asked, and Nora realized how far she had already traveled from this world.

For three and a half months, Andrei Ivanovich held fast to Amalia’s arm. For three and a half months, he carried her to the bathtub, washed her, wiped her dry, dressed her again, put her to bed, and lay by her side. If he was absent, she began to cry, and there was nothing Nora could do to comfort her. But when Andrei Ivanovich returned, Amalia took his hand and held it, and calmed down immediately. Then she fell asleep. Like a nursing child who was given the breast.

From time to time, the doctor from the polyclinic came, measured her blood pressure, and ordered blood tests. Then the nurse came. When the nurse came for the last time, Andrei Ivanovich happened not to be at home. Nora took her into her mother’s room. Amalia lay on top of three pillows, sitting almost upright. She held out her withered hand trustingly, and the nurse stabbed her finger with the needle. From the incision it made oozed a transparent reddish-yellow drop. Nora started in horror—the red blood cells had died.

When the nurse left, Nora returned to her mother. She was smiling the smile of a child. Her teeth were the same as Yurik’s—bright white, a bit uneven at the sides. They were the most alive thing in her dry, diminished little face.

“What do you think, child—if they give me an invalid’s pension, will it increase by much? Because, the way it is now, we can’t raise dogs for money anymore.”

On the evening of that same day, she went into a coma, and only woke up once, in the middle of the night. Seeking Andrei Ivanovich with her eyes, she said, “Have you had your dinner, Andrei?”

For another whole day her breathing was labored, spasmodic; then it stopped. It was in the predawn hours. Andrei Ivanovich held her hand until it grew cold. Nora’s tears poured down her face, and from Yurik’s room came strains of “Yesterday.” For some reason, she felt there should be silence. She opened her son’s door and said, “Yurik, Grandmother died.”

He kept on playing the song. When he finished it, he said, “I sensed it.”

And so he played his Beatles until morning, and for the first time in years, these sounds were not jarring to Nora’s ears. They didn’t irritate her in the least. In his breaking, thirteen-year-old voice, at the top of his lungs, he sang “Your Mother Should Know,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She’s Leaving Home.” The music suddenly seemed appropriate and necessary. It was astonishing: he didn’t say a word, but the music that had irritated Nora a hundred times over sounded bitterly sad, and even exalted.

Andrei Ivanovich remained by Amalia’s side, holding the hand of his beloved wife, and Nora had no desire to make practical decisions and plans: requiem service–funeral repast … It was all meaningless and in vain … What a pity that I didn’t love her as I should, that I couldn’t forgive her her love, that I didn’t understand her giftedness, her genius and uniqueness, which she invested almost solely in this love …

Nora sat next to Andrei Ivanovich, feeling empty, completely empty, then gradually filling with tenderness and a sense of guilt and repose that it was over, this sad suffering of Amalia’s parting from the world—her world, which consisted almost entirely of her love for this balding old man. Andrei Ivanovich held Amalia’s dead hands in his own. She had broad palms; short, triangular fingernails; strong, confident fingers. How self-assured and precise, even elegant, the movements of her hands were when she sat at the drafting table, Nora thought, recalling a memory from childhood. She was the one who taught me to hold a pencil. And wasn’t able to teach Yurik.

How is it I never realized this before? My hands, which resemble Marusya’s so much outwardly, are actually Mama’s, in their grip, in their feeling for pencil and line, in their innate confidence of movement.

Genrikh came to the requiem in the church with a bunch of red carnations, and stood at a distance from the others. There weren’t a lot of mourners: a few former friends and colleagues, neighbors from Nikitsky Boulevard, and one or two from Prioksko. Next to Nora stood Andrei Ivanovich and Yurik, with his guitar, and Nora, glancing at Genrikh, sensed the kind of abandonment and loneliness he must have been feeling.

When the service ended, she went up to him and asked whether he would go to the cemetery with them. He hemmed and hawed, and mumbled something along the lines of “I don’t know if she would have wanted it … if he would like it.” But he got into the funeral bus with everyone else and went to Vagankovo Cemetery, where Amalia’s parents, Zinaida Filippovna and Alexander Ignatievich Kotenko, were buried under an enormous wooden cross erected by the Church of St. Pimen in 1924 for its former precentor. Then Genrikh came to the funeral repast in the house where he had once lived with Amalia, sat at the same table with Andrei Ivanovich, and kept looking at him, wondering why Amalia had left him, a fine fellow, for this scraggly, balding man who looked so simple and ordinary. Andrei Ivanovich didn’t even notice that he was there.

That evening, Nora could never have imagined that her respite from misfortune would be so brief. Three months later, it was Genrikh’s turn. He was diagnosed with cancer, too. Lung cancer. He needed an operation. Genrikh’s wife came to see Nora—the fat Irina, in her fat boots, shedding fat tears as Nora poured her some tea. While Genrikh was in the hospital, undergoing his examinations and tests, Irina’s daughter gave birth to her second child, and now her daughter, her daughter’s two children, and her husband had all moved in, and were staying in Irina’s living room.

“What was I to do? I couldn’t chase my own daughter out!” It was impossible for Irina and Genrikh to occupy the tiny bedroom together, because of the cancer, because he smoked, because the children cried. “You take him, Norka. They’ve promised my son-in-law an apartment, and as soon as he gets it, they’ll move out. It will definitely happen this year—they promised him. Then I can take Genrikh back.”

This will be the end of me, Nora thought. She was filled not with pity but with rage. And complete helplessness. Not because Genrikh had paid for their apartment, and this banishment would be a severe blow. She felt she just didn’t have the strength to bear up under another illness when she had just traveled that road. There were no two ways about it, she had loved her mother; but her father? To be honest, absolutely honest, she didn’t love him. She didn’t like him. She knew, she understood, but it was still hard to love him. She wouldn’t say it out loud, of course. Not to this cow, in any case. Nora was allergic to him. And she didn’t want to do it. Out loud she said, “When should I pick him up?”

Irina cheered up, not expecting such an easy victory. “Oh, Norka, Norka!”

At this point, Nora lost her composure. “Don’t call me Norka; I’m Nora! You know, Ibsen has a play called A Doll’s House. Nora is the main character. Nora Helmer. And my highly cultured grandmother Marusya named me after her.”

“Yes, that’s what I said, Norka. Nora, I mean!” Irina said, correcting herself.

Nora decided not to move the boat bed. She changed the curtains, replacing the dark-green linen curtains with a piece of unbleached canvas she had taken from the theater. She dragged Yurik’s larger bookcase into the room, and put the desk in Yurik’s room. Irina had left the negotiations about the move to Nora: “It will be easier for you.”

Nora visited her father in the hospital. He was in a good academic hospital, and was rather proud of his privileged situation. When Nora came, he was walking down the corridor with a squat, rotund man wearing silk pajamas and a ski cap. Her father introduced him to her. “This is my daughter, Nora, a theater set designer and artist. Nora, this is Boris Grigorievich, a well-known physicist, winner of the Stalin Prize,” and the ski cap rolled away down the corridor.

“Do you know who that is?” Genrikh whispered to her conspiratorially.

Nora had been preparing herself for this meeting with her father the whole way—cancer, cancer, not certain how far it had gone, control yourself, the situation is hopeless, he’s vain, garrulous, but he’s a good man, he’s good, and so certain that everyone will like him, that everyone loves him … He’s not to blame, it’s not his fault, I know that, I know that … Nevertheless, she could hardly restrain her irritation with him.

“Who, then?”

“The director of an academic research institute, the big boss! An inveterate bastard, they say,” he told her in a cheerful voice, and she laughed. Still, there was something charming about him, the old blabbermouth.

“Well, how are you?”

“Wonderful, dear, wonderful! The food is good. Well, Irina does her bit, too—yesterday she brought over a whole bucket of borscht. There’s a fridge in the ward. Would you like some? There’s even a kitchen here for the patients. And the staff is simply exceptional. Oh, the nurses!” And he clicked with his tongue, as though he intended to enjoy their charms without delay. Nora was very sensitive to nuance and intonation, and his response made her shudder. It’s horrible, how distasteful he is to me. Still, I can’t do anything about it.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Nora suggested.

“Gladly. I took a walk the day before yesterday, too.”

Nora helped him get dressed—it was hard for him to move his left arm. His left lung had been removed. The doctors didn’t tell him what they had told his wife and daughter: with lung cancer, you had about five years to live, at most. Judging by the X-rays, four of those years had already elapsed. “You can have an operation, or you can choose not to. Makes no difference,” a famous surgeon had told them. “The operation is difficult for the patient, and rather pointless, since the second lung has already been affected. But miracles do happen. The disease does sometimes stop on its own.”

Irina took the decision upon herself: operate. She didn’t consult Nora about it.

Now they walked around the hospital grounds. He had been here five weeks already, and already knew half the hospital. He greeted everyone.

Sociable, Nora thought, wincing inwardly. Then she steeled herself and said, “Dad, I have a suggestion. You know that Ninka and her children have moved in with you for a while.”

“Yes, yes. Ninka’s a great girl; I can’t see any problem. Let them stay until they have an apartment of their own. They promised to give it to them soon.”

“Right, but you know yourself … A small baby will cry at night. And after your operation … Why don’t you move in with me for a while? Until the apartment issue gets sorted out.”

And then something she never could have imagined happened. Genrikh’s mouth twisted, his face crumpled, and he began to cry.

“Daughter, my dear daughter … I didn’t expect … Do you mean it? For this … For this it was worth getting ill. My good daughter … I … I don’t deserve it.” He wiped his eyes with a soiled handkerchief, and Nora looked at him, looked at him for a long time, then kissed his forehead.

My God, she thought, but he’s really very unhappy, and all the cheerful camaraderie, the jokes and funny stories, his clowning, are a front. They’re the mask of an unhappy man. My God, how could I not have seen it? I’m such an idiot.

Four days later, Nora moved Genrikh to Nikitsky Boulevard, and prepared to take up her sorrowful duty for a second time.

Several days before he died, his exhausting cough disappeared. He stopped talking about how they would all go to the Crimea in the spring. He couldn’t smoke anymore, but from time to time he took a cigarette between his yellowed fingers, rolled it back and forth gently, then set it aside. Just before he slipped into unconsciousness, he asked Nora to bury him with Mama. He spoke so softly she had to ask him to repeat himself, just to make sure.

“With your mother,” he said, very clearly. “With Amalia.”

Nora was unable to carry out his wishes because of Andrei Ivanovich, who rushed to the cemetery nearly every weekend to sit with her by her grave. But Nora didn’t say anything.

After he was cremated, Nora placed the urn with her father’s ashes in the columbarium niche reserved for the ashes of his parents, Jacob Ossetsky and Marusya Kerns. While the attendant removed the marble slab in front of the boxlike niche in order to squeeze the new urn into the narrow space, Nora recalled Marusya’s wish, which she had expressed to Genrikh not long before her death: “You can bury me anywhere, as long as it’s not with Jacob.” Genrikh hadn’t wished to remain for all time in intimate physical proximity with his parents after his death, either. What complex, confused feelings and relations they had …

Not long before Genrikh’s death, when he only had a few weeks to live, Nora asked him to write down the family tree and to describe what he remembered from his Kiev childhood and relatives. Resting his elbows on the desk, his muffled cough coming and going, he wrote something down for her.

When Nora opened the desk drawer after his death, she found a single sheet of paper covered with her father’s right-leaning handwriting. It read:

I, Genrikh Ossetsky, was born on March 11, 1916, in Kiev. I moved to Moscow in 1923 with my parents. I graduated from the eighth grade at the United Labor School No. 110. I worked as a tunneler in the Metro Construction Project. In 1933, I entered the instrument-making technical school. I graduated in 1936. In 1938, I entered the Machine Tool Institute, from which I graduated in 1944. In 1945, I became a member of the Party (crossed out). In 1948, I defended my Candidate’s Degree thesis and became head of a laboratory at the same Institute.

Here the report ended. Nora read it with sadness. He was just the candidate any personnel department was seeking—but why hadn’t he recorded a single true memory about his own family? What had happened that prevented him from recalling anyone? It was an enigma. A mystery.

Now they would have to tolerate one another in death till the end of time … or love one another.