Medea and Her Children

CHAPTER 15

Medea retired from her job in the autumn, on the Revolution Day holiday in November. Her immediate plan for filling her new free time was to mend the quilts, which became tatty unbelievably quickly over a summer season. In readiness she got in satin material and a boxful of good bobbin thread, but discovered the first evening she laid a distressed quilt on the table that its flowers were detaching themselves from their faded background while others, three-dimensional and shifting, came floating in to replace them.

She was running a temperature, Medea guessed, and closed her eyes to shut off the stream of flowers. Happily, Nina had come from Tbilisi only the day before.

It seemed to be the same illness from which she had suffered just before her marriage, when Samuel had looked after her so zealously and with such tremulous love and tenderness that he had every reason to quip later, “Other people have a feverish honeymoon, but Medea and I had a honeymonth of fever.” In the intervals between attacks of furious shivering and fuddled semiconsciousness, Medea lapsed into a state of serene tranquility in which it seemed to her that Samuel was in the next room and would come in to see her in a minute, awkwardly bearing a tumbler in both hands and with his eyes slightly bulging because the tumbler was hotter than he had expected.

Instead of Samuel, however, it was Nina who emerged from the semidarkness, enveloped in the fragrance of St.-John’s-wort and dissolving honey, with a thick glass tumbler in her thin, flat hands and her matte-black eyes deep-set like Samuel’s, and Medea realized something she seemed to have been waiting for for a very long time, and now it finally had come to her like a revelation: Nina was their daughter, Samuel’s and hers, their little girl; she had always known that but for some reason had forgotten it for a long time, but now it had come back to her and it was such a joy. Nina helped her up from the pillow, gave her the fragrant drink, and said something, but the meaning didn’t quite get through to Medea, as if she were speaking a foreign language: “Yes, yes, Georgian,” Medea remembered.

But the intonation was so rich and clear that she could understand everything just from the expressions on Nina’s face, the movements of her hand, and also from the taste of the drink. It was surprising too that Nina could anticipate her wishes, and even opened and closed the curtains a moment before Medea was going to ask her to do it.

Medea’s relatives in Tbilisi were the descendants of her two sisters: Anelya, who was the elder, and Anastasia, whom Anelya had brought up after the death of their parents. Anastasia had left a son, Robert, who was unmarried and seemed to be slightly touched in the head. Medea had no contact with him.

Anelya had not had any children of her own. Nina and Timur were adopted, so the Tbilisi relatives were a grafted branch of the family. These children were blood relatives of Anelya’s husband Lado, his nephew and niece. Lado’s brother Grigol and his wife Susanna were an absurd and unhappy couple: he was a fervent champion of a fair deal for traditional craftsmen; she was the city’s madwoman, with a penchant for Communist Party work.

Lado Alexandrovich was a musician and professor at the Tbilisi Conservatory. He taught cello and had nothing in common with his brother, whom he had hardly seen since the mid-1920s.

Lado and Anelya first saw their nephew and niece early one morning in May 1937. They were brought to their house by a distant relative after the arrest of both parents in the night.

The law of pairs is only a particular instance of a more general law of recurrence of the same event, whose purpose seems sometimes to be character formation, sometimes the accomplishing of destiny. In Anelya’s life it operated very precisely. Exactly ten years had passed since Anastasia married and left home, and now fate had again brought orphans into their house, but two this time.

Anelya was already past forty, and Lado was ten years or so older. Their bloom had faded, their skin withered, and they were preparing themselves for a peaceful old age, not the lifestyle of young parents. The old age they had anticipated never came to pass. It took time to bring the neglected children around, and then the war began. Lado did not survive the rigors of the times and died of pneumonia in 1943.

Anelya set the children on their feet by realizing the assets of a once-prosperous household. She died in 1957, shortly after the return from exile of Susanna, who was by now completely demented. Nina was a young woman by then, and had a much loved stepmother replaced by her natural mother, a one-eyed harpy full of spite and paranoid devotion to the Leader. Nina had been looking after her for twenty years now.

The three or four days Nina had been planning to spend with Medea stretched to eight, and as soon as she had Medea back on her feet, she returned to Tbilisi.

Medea’s illness had not completely passed. It spread to her joints, and she had now to treat herself with her home remedies. She bound her knees with thick bandages of old wool over cabbage leaves, or beeswax, or large boiled onions, and having completely lost her usual agility, hobbled around the house, but sat most of the time repairing quilts. As she did so, she was thinking about Nina and her crazy mother, and about Nike, who had spent the whole of September in Tbilisi because the theater was on tour there and, to judge even by Nina’s toned-down stories, had staged quite a few performances of her own.

“Idle thoughts,” Medea decided, stopped herself there, and reverted to doing what old Dionisy had taught her in her youth: “If worldly thoughts are troubling you and you can’t let go of them, don’t struggle but think prayerfully, addressing them to God.”

“Poor Susanna. Forgive her, Lord, for the dreadful and stupid things she has done. Soften her heart and let her see how Nina is suffering because of her. And help Nina. She is meek and patient. Give her strength, Lord. And protect Nike from all manner of evil. The girl is following a dangerous path. She’s so kind, so lively. Show her the way, Lord.”

She again recalled Nina’s account of how Nike had turned the life of a famous actor’s family upside down. She had embarked on a wild romance in full view of the citizens of Tbilisi, sparkling, dazzling, chortling, and the actor’s poor wife, dressed in black and consumed by jealousy, had rushed around to her husband’s friends at night, trying to force her way through closed doors in the hope of catching her faithless spouse in flagrante delicto. Which, in the end, she did. There was a smashing of crockery, and people leaping out of windows; there was screaming and passion and a total breakdown of all propriety.

Perhaps most surprising was that back in October Medea had received a short note from Nike describing her visit to Tbilisi, the great success the theater had enjoyed, and even congratulating herself that her costumes for the production had been written about separately. “It’s ages since I enjoyed myself so much and had such fun,” the letter concluded. “But in Moscow the weather is dreadful, the divorce is dragging on forever, and I would give anything just to live somewhere a bit sunnier.”

As regards the weather, Nike was absolutely right. The summer had ended in August and late autumn set in immediately. The trees had no time to turn properly yellow, and the leaves fell to the ground quite green, bludgeoned from the trees by strong, cold rain. Her merry September in Tbilisi was followed by an unendurable October in Moscow. The weather got no better in November, but at least Nike’s mood improved as a lot of work came her way.

She had another production to complete in her theater. She was forever looking into the workshops where, without her beady eye, the seamstresses were far too slapdash; and on top of that she was earning money on the side from work she was doing for the Romany Theater.

She was seduced by the Gypsy ambience, but found working for the theater very difficult indeed. Those same free and easy Gypsy ways which looked so enchanting in city squares and trams and on the stage, were a complete nightmare at the workplace: meetings arranged by the producer had to be rescheduled half a dozen times, and all the actresses threw terrible tantrums to back their impossible demands. Then, on the very day when one of the most strident of them, a lady already past her prime, threw in Nike’s face the burgundy-red costume she had been given instead of the lacy white one she had wanted, and Nike equally adroitly shot it straight back at her, lining it with solid theater swear words the way small weights used to be sewn into the hems of light dresses, something very unpleasant happened which Nike had been doing her best to avoid.

Shortly before midnight Masha came to see her. No sooner had she opened the door than Nike realized that the long-expected unpleasantness had occurred. Masha rushed to hug her. “Nike, say it isn’t true! It can’t be true, say it!”

Nike stroked her hair slippery with rain and said nothing.

“I know it can’t be true,” Masha insisted, crumpling in her hands a crepe de Chine head scarf with a lilac, grey, and black diamond pattern. “What was it doing there? Why was it there?”

“Shush, shush! You’re all tensed up.” Nike made a warning gesture in the direction of the children’s room.

Nike had been expecting this inevitable storm for so long, ever since July, that now, if anything, she felt relieved. The whole ridiculous business had dragged on all summer. When she left the Village in May, Nike had genuinely intended to give a secret present to Masha by letting her have Butonov, but things hadn’t worked out that way.

All the time Masha had been taking the children for walks in the Crimea, Nike had been seeing Butonov, saying to herself that time would tell. They had slipped into an amazingly relaxed relationship. Butonov was delighted by Nike’s forthrightness, the way she could talk about absolutely anything, and her complete lack of possessiveness; but when he did one time try to express this in his halting way, she stopped him: “Butonchik, the head on your shoulders is not your greatest asset. I know what you are trying to say. You are quite right. The point is that I have a male psychology. Just like you, I’m afraid of getting stuck in a long affair, in obligations, in marriage, for heaven’s sake. You might like to bear in mind that means I’m always the first to dump my men.”

It wasn’t quite true, but it sounded good.

“Okay, but I’ll need two weeks’ notice,” Butonov joked.

“Valerii, if you are going to be so witty, I shall fall head over heels in love with you, and that would be dangerous.” Nike burst into peals of laughter, throwing her head back and making her mane of hair and her breasts shake.

She was constantly laughing: in the tram, at meals, in the swimming pool they had gone to one time, and Butonov, who didn’t usually laugh much himself, was infected by her laughter, guffawing till he sobbed, till his sides ached and he couldn’t speak. They laughed themselves silly in bed too.

“You are a unique lover,” Nike said admiringly. “Laughing usually deflates erections.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, perhaps you just haven’t made me laugh hard enough.”

As soon as Masha got home at the beginning of July, she dropped the children on Alexandra and immediately rushed off to Rastorguevo. She was doubly in luck: she found Butonov at home, and she didn’t find Nike there, because she had left the day before.

Masha’s arrival coincided with the height of the renovations abandoned two years previously. The day before, Butonov had cleaned out his grandmother’s half, in which nobody had lived for twenty years, and now two men he had hired to help him had arrived. Nike persuaded him not to line the walls with paneling as he had planned, but rather to strip everything down to the logs, clean and recaulk them, and repair the rough-hewn furniture left from the distant past.

“Mark my words, Butonov, you are using this furniture as firewood today, but in twenty years’ time these will be museum pieces.”

Butonov was amazed, but he consented, and now he and the workmen were stripping off the many layers of wallpaper.

“Butonov!” a woman’s voice shouted up from the street. “Valerii!”

He came out in a cloud of dust, wearing his old doctor’s hat. Masha was standing at the gate, although he didn’t recognize her immediately. She had a deep and very attractive Crimean tan, and a wide grin which filled her slender face. Pushing her hand through a space between the pickets, she drew back the latch and, while he was still slowly wondering what to do, rushed up the winding path and threw herself at him like a puppy, burying her face in his chest.

“It’s been so terrible! So terrible! I was beginning to think I would never see you again!”

A strong smell of the sea came from the top of her head and he again heard, like that time in the Crimea, the thunderous pounding of her heart. “What’s going on?! I can hear your heart as if I were listening through a stethoscope.”

She was radiating heat and light like the white-hot coil of a powerful lamp, and Butonov remembered all he had forgotten about the way she furiously, desperately struggled with him in the little room in Medea’s house; and he forgot what he had remembered: her long letters full of poetry and reflections on things which were not exactly beyond his understanding, but of no earthly use to anyone.

She pressed her lips to the dusty white doctor’s coat and breathed out hot air. She raised her face. The smile had gone and she was so pale that he could clearly see the two inverted crescents of dark freckles running from her cheekbones to her nose.

“Here I am.”

If Grandmother’s half of the house was in a mess from the redecorating, then the attic, which they climbed up to, was a complete dump. Neither his grandmother nor his mother ever threw anything out: old washing troughs with holes in them, boilers, the bric-a-brac of a hundred years. The house had been built by his great-grandfather at the end of the nineteenth century when Rastorguevo was still a trading village, and there was a good century’s worth of dust in the attic. It was impossible to lie down, so Butonov sat Masha on a rickety cabinet; and she looked just like a pottery money-box cat, only thinner and without the slit on the top of her head.

It was all so powerful and over so quickly that Butonov couldn’t tear himself away, so he carried her over to an armchair which was in tatters and again he was seared by the tightness of the chair and even more by the tightness of her childlike body. Tears flowed down her otherworldly face, and he licked them off and they tasted of seawater. God Almighty!

Masha soon left, and Butonov went back to stripping wallpaper with the workmen, who seemed not even to have noticed his absence. He was as empty as a stovepipe or, more precisely, as empty as a rotten nut, because his emptiness was enclosed and rounded and now had no outlet. He fancied he had given away more than he meant to.

“Well, those sisters”—he didn’t know their exact relationship—“are a complete contrast. One laughs, the other cries. They go well together.”

For three days Masha could not catch Nike at home, although she phoned constantly and Alexandra had told her Nike was in town. Finally she got through.

“Nike! Where on earth have you been?”

It never occurred to her that Nike had been avoiding her, feeling ill prepared for this meeting.

“Three guesses!” Nike snorted.

“A new romance!” Masha said, bursting into laughter, swallowing the bait without a moment’s hesitation.

“Top marks and then some!” Nike rewarded her perspicacity.

“Your place or mine? Yours is better. I’m on my way,” Masha exclaimed, burning with impatience.

“Let’s meet at Uspensky Lane instead,” Nike countered. “Mother must be at her wits’ end after having them for three days.”

Having taken the children to Alexandra on her first day back, Masha had quite forgotten about them. Alexandra and Ivan Isaevich were celebrating a festival of love with their grandchildren and were not in the least tired of them. Ivan Isaevich would, though, have liked to take them to the dacha: much better than having them cooped up in town.

“No, no. It’s better if I come to your place. We couldn’t talk there,” Masha begged, and Nike surrendered. There was no escape, and she knew in advance that she would be receiving Masha’s confession.

From that day Nike was cast in the role of confidante. Her position was ambiguous to say the least, but it seemed too late now to admit to her own involvement in the affair. In her ardor, Masha was bursting to tell Nike about every meeting with Butonov. It was terribly important for her.

Over many years Masha had got used to sharing even her most insignificant experiences with her husband, but she could not talk to Alik about this, so she dumped everything on Nike, including the poetry which she was constantly writing. “Pushkin’s Boldino Autumn, my Rastorguevo Autumn!” Masha joked.

If before she had been no stranger to insomnia, in these months Masha slept a ragged and fitful sleep full of sounds, lines of verse, and disturbing images. Unreal animals came to her in her dreams, animals with many legs, many eyes, half-birds, half-cats, with symbolic allusions. One, fearfully familiar, rubbed up against her, and its name was also familiar to her. It consisted of a series of numbers and letters. When she woke, she remembered its strange name: Zh4836. She burst out laughing. It was the number printed in thick black ink on the linen ribbon she sewed to the bed sheets before sending them to the laundry.

All this nonsense was imbued with significance. One time she dreamt a completely finished poem which she wrote down while half-asleep. She was amazed when she read it the following morning. “It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine. I could never have written this myself.”

Through lust to love and into the abyss

of destinations reached past our contriving:

I give the words that tell of you and this,

I serve as target too of all your striving;

and in the brooding darkness of our blood

the instant blazes like a blunderbuss,

and all is swept away as in a flood

and leaves no brim between the one of us.

“It’s exactly as if I had written it under dictation. Look, not a single correction,” she crowed, showing Nike the record of her nighttime inspiration.

Nike did not like these poems. They frightened her. On the other hand, she found it hilarious that, with Masha informing her about every word Butonov uttered, about his every movement, she knew minute by minute how he had spent the previous day.

“Any fried potatoes left?” she would innocently ask, because Masha had told her she had been peeling potatoes for him the day before and had cut her finger.

Butonov did not speak to Nike about Masha and she never said a word about her rival, but Butonov had the impression they both knew perfectly well how things stood and were even sharing out the days of the week between them, with Masha coming on weekends and Nike on weekdays. There was no such deal, of course. It was just that during the week Nike went to the dachas to visit the children: either Liza, who was staying with Alexandra, or Katya, who was living with her other grandmother. Little Alik was staying with Alexandra too.

Big Alik was trying to arrange his duty roster so that emergency calls fell on the weekends, so that he would not lose laboratory time; and Masha, preferring not to lie but to keep a more honorable silence, left home when Alik wasn’t there. Although of late he had had very little time to spend at home.

Alik was steady and good-humored, and didn’t ask awkward questions. Their conversation centered on emigrating. They had already arranged for an invitation from Israel, but although Masha contributed to these conversations, their emigration seemed unreal to her.

When Nike went off to Tbilisi in September, Masha was devastated by her absence. She tried ringing through but found it impossible to catch her at the hotel. She wasn’t able to contact her through Nina either.

In September, Butonov finished his renovating and went to stay with his wife in Khamovniki, but the redecorated house in Rastorguevo drew him back and he would sleep there two or three times a week. Sometimes he came to collect Masha, and they drove there together. One time they even went to gather mushrooms in Rastorguevo, found nothing, got soaked to the skin, then dried their belongings by the stove and one of Masha’s stockings caught fire; and this too was a little event in their life, like the cut finger, or a scratch or a bruise Masha suffered in the course of their amorous endeavors. Whether Butonov’s house was inimical to her or whether she brought out a tendency to sexual horseplay in Butonov himself, she had not a few of these little injuries, and was even rather proud of her souvenirs of passion spent.

When Nike finally came back from Tbilisi, Masha related all these trivia to her at great length, and finally mentioned in passing that their invitation from Israel had arrived. Nike was amazed at how Masha’s head had been turned, when she couldn’t see that receiving the invitation was what really mattered.

Emigrating meant parting from your family, perhaps forever, yet here was Masha showing off her bruises and reading her poems. This time Nike too had something to relate. She was getting very deeply involved in her new affair and had decided this would be a good moment to dot Butonov’s i .

She waited a whole week, like Penelope, for her Vakhtang to come from Tbilisi to Mosfilm for his auditions, but his arrival kept being postponed, and in order not to get out of condition Nike took herself around to see Butonov. As Masha constantly reported on her own movements, there was no problem in finding a suitable moment.

Butonov was very pleased to see Nike. He wanted to show her the newly redecorated half of the house. Nike was, after all, his personal interior designer. He now loved the idea of the exposed beams, but Nike was horrified to see that the logs had been drenched with varnish. She comically berated him at length and ordered him to clean the varnish off with solvent. She moved the furniture around and pointed out to him what needed repairing and what was best left alone. She had lived many years with a stepfather who was a cabinetmaker and with her talents had rapidly understood the ins and outs of his profession. She promised to bring Butonov some colored glass to replace what was missing in the buffet and to sew curtains for him in the theater workshop.

At some point in the proceedings Nike’s head scarf slipped off and insinuated itself snakelike between the sheet and the mattress. Nike couldn’t find it, although she looked for it for a long time in the morning. The scarf was one she had made herself when she was learning batik at college.

When Masha, barely through the door, crumpling the scarf in her hands, fired the question straight at her as to whether it was true, Nike sternly cut her short: “Well, what did Butonov say?”

“That you and he have . . . for ages, since the Crimea. It can’t be true, it can’t. I told him it was impossible.”

“And what did he say?” Nike asked, keeping up.

“He said, ‘Accept it as fact.’ ” Masha was still screwing up Nike’s scarf, the embodiment of the fact.

Nike drew the scarf out of her hands and threw it under the mirror. “Well, accept it!”

“I can’t, I can’t!” Masha wailed.

“Masha,” Nike suddenly softened. “It’s just how things turned out. What do you want me to do, hang myself? Don’t let’s make a tragedy out of it. God knows, it’s Les Liaisons dangereuses all over again.”

“But, Nike, my sunshine, what am I to do? You want me to just get used to it? I don’t understand myself why it hurts so. When I pulled this scarf out, I almost died.” She became flustered again. “No, no. It’s impossible.”

“What do you mean? Why is it impossible?”

“I can’t explain. It’s as if anyone can do anything with anyone. Nothing matters. It doesn’t matter who you choose. One person is just the same as another. But here, I just know, there is something unique and special, against which nothing else has any meaning. Unique.”

“My angel,” Nike stopped her. “Aren’t you just imagining that? Every case is unique, believe me. Butonov is an excellent lover, but you measure that in centimeters, minutes, hours, the level of hormones in the blood. They’re all just parameters. He has a good body, no more than that. Your Alik is a remarkable person, intelligent, talented. Butonov isn’t worthy to lick his boots, but Alik just hasn’t given you enough—”

“Shut up!” Masha screamed. “Shut up! Take your Butonov and all his centimeters. You’re welcome to him!”

She rushed out, for some reason seizing the head scarf she had just returned to Nike from the pier table.

Nike did not stop her. Let her rage. If people have idiotic delusions, you have to leave them to get rid of them. When all was said and done, Butonov had put it quite correctly: “Accept it as fact.” But then . . . to her annoyance Nike recollected Masha’s poem: “Accept too that beyond all measure, like heaven’s grace on heaven’s grace . . .” Well, go ahead and accept it. Accept it as fact.

Dear Butonov! I know that correspondence is not your forte, that of all the forms of human interaction the most important for you is tactile. Even your profession is like that—everything in the fingertips, in touching, in delicate movements. And if one stays on the superficial, the surface level, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense, then everything that is happening is perfectly proper. Touches have neither faces nor eyes, it is only receptors at work. Nike tried to explain that to me too: everything is determined by centimeters, minutes, hormone levels.

But this is just a matter of faith. I evidently belong to a different confession; what is important for me is the expression on someone’s face, their inner impulse, a turn of phrase, what they feel in their heart. And if that is not there, then we are only objects for each other to use. To tell the truth, that is what torments me most. Are there really no relationships other than those of the body? Is there really nothing between you and me other than embracing until the world disappears? Is there really no communion higher than the physical, when all sense of the distinctness of our two bodies is lost?

Nike, your lover, my more-than-sister, told me there is nothing more than centimeters, minutes, hormones. Say no. Tell me it isn’t true! Was there really nothing in what took place between us that can’t be described by parameters of one kind or another? If that is true, then you don’t exist, neither do I, neither does anybody or anything at all and we are mechanical toys and not the children of the Lord God. Here is a little poem for you, dear Butonov, and I beg you: say it isn’t true.

Play on, centaur, play on, chimera of two breeds,

burn, fire, along the boundary dividing

the human soul and its immortal needs,

the stallion, his lusts unbridled riding.

Your destiny it is to mediate, to ferry,

to ply shores which forget how close they used to be,

and heedlessly you plunge into those waters merry

which care no more than you if you remember me.

Masha Miller

Butonov read the letter and groaned. Knowing Masha’s personality well enough, he was expecting major ructions when she discovered her rival but had never imagined that her jealousy would be expressed in such a complicated, elaborate manner. He really had pissed her off.

Ten days or so later, having given things a chance to settle down a bit, he rang Masha to ask whether she fancied a trip out to Rastorguevo. After much hesitation, periodical yeses and nos (Butonov could tell even over the telephone that it was exactly what she wanted), she agreed.

At Rastorguevo everything was new. There had been a heavy snowfall, so heavy that the path from the gate to the porch had been buried, and in order to drive the car in Butonov had had to scrape the snow up with a wooden shovel into a large snowdrift.

It was cold in the house: it seemed colder inside than out, but Butonov promptly gave Masha such a workout that they both started feeling too hot. She moaned through her tears, and kept pleading, “Say no!”

“What do you want ‘no’ for, when it’s all ‘yes, yes, yes’!” Butonov laughed.

After that he lit the stove, opened a tin of sardines in tomato sauce which had been around for ages, and ate it himself, Masha barely touching it. There was nothing else in the house.

They decided not to go back to Moscow and walked to the railway station. Masha rang home from the public telephone and told Debora Lvovna that she wouldn’t be home that night, as she was visiting friends at their dacha and didn’t want to come back so late.

Her mother-in-law flared up: “Of course not! You don’t care two hoots about your husband and child! If you want to know what that’s called—”

Masha hung up.

“That’s all fixed. I told them I wouldn’t be home.”

They walked back to the house along a path of white snow. Butonov showed her the windows of the apartment block where Vitka Kravchuk lived.

“Want to drop in?” he enquired.

“God forbid,” Masha laughed.

It was cool in Butonov’s house. It did not hold the heat.

“Next on the list is a new stove. I’ll put one in next year,” Butonov resolved.

They settled themselves in the kitchen, where it was at least a bit warmer, and dragged mattresses in from all over the house. They had no sooner warmed up, however, than Butonov got pains in his stomach and went out to the toilet in the courtyard. He came back and lay down. Masha, running her finger over his face, began talking about the spirituality of sex, and the personality which expresses itself through touch.

The tinned sardines had Butonov running out to the courtyard all night. His stomach was churning, and the tender voice of unsleeping Masha cooed on in tones of neurotic enquiry.

To give him his due, he was polite and didn’t ask her to shut up. Only sometimes, when the pain subsided a bit, he slumped into sleep. In the morning as they were driving back to Moscow, Butonov said, “One thing I really am grateful to you for at this moment is that when I was suffering from the runs you did me the favor of not reciting any poetry at me.”

Masha looked at him in astonishment: “But I did, Valerii. I recited ‘Poem Without a Hero’ to you from start to finish.”

Masha’s relations with her husband did not come unstuck, but recently they had been seeing less of each other. The invitation they had received had not been submitted yet because Alik wanted to resign from his job before filing the application, and before that there was a series of experiments he needed to finish.

He disappeared into the laboratory until late at night and turned down any further emergency-duty work. He periodically carted a rucksack full of books to the secondhand bookshop, since he was going to have to say goodbye to his father’s library. He could see Masha was disturbed and jumpy, and treated her solicitously, like a patient.

In December, Butonov went off to Sweden, for a couple of weeks, he said vaguely, although of course he knew perfectly well which day he would be back. He liked his freedom. Nike barely noticed his absence. She had a children’s play to get ready in time for the school holidays, and in any case Vakhtang had finally arrived and she spent all her free time with him and his Moscow Georgian friends. Life was a busy whirl of restaurants, sometimes at the Cinema Club, sometimes at the Theater Society.

Masha pined. She kept trying to get through to Nike to talk to her about Butonov, but Nike was incommunicado. Masha had no wish to talk to other friends about him, and in any case it would have been impossible.

Insomnia, which until then had only been sharpening its claws, overwhelmed Masha in December. Alik brought her sedatives, but the artificial sleep was even worse than the insomnia. Her obsessive dream would start at any random place but led always to the same ending: she was trying to find Butonov, to catch up with him, but he kept slipping away, spilling like water, turning into different objects, as if in a fairy tale, dissolving, vanishing into smoke.

Twice Masha went to Rastorguevo just for the sake of making the journey from Paveletsky Station, taking the train to his stop and walking to his house, to stand for a time at the gate, see the house shrouded in snow, look at its dark windows, and go back home. In all, it took around three and a half hours, and the journey there was more enjoyable than the journey back.

Two weeks passed and still there was no sign of him. Masha rang his home in Khamovniki. An elderly woman told her in a weary voice that he would be back at around ten; but he wasn’t there at ten, or at eleven, and the next morning the same voice replied, “Call again on Friday.”

“But has he come back?” Masha asked timidly.

“I said ring on Friday,” the woman replied rattily.

It was still only Monday.

“He’s come back and hasn’t phoned,” Masha thought, hurt. She called Nike to ask whether she knew anything about Butonov’s whereabouts, but Nike didn’t.

Masha set off for Rastorguevo again, this time in the late afternoon. The snow had been cleared away from the gates of his house, and they were closed and locked. His car stood in the yard. In his grandmother’s half a faint light was burning. Masha yanked the icy side gate. The path to the house was deep in snow, and as she walked along, she sank almost up to her knees in it. She rang the bell for a long time, but nobody opened the door.

She wanted to wake up, so much did all this feel like one of her dreams, just as vivid and hurtful; and Butonov gave some flickering sign of his presence in just the same way: his beige car parked there with a blanket of snow on the roof. And she couldn’t get hold of Butonov himself.

Masha stood around for forty minutes or so and left.

“Nike must be in there,” she concluded.

In the train she was thinking not of Butonov but of Nike. Nike had been part of her life from an early age. They were linked, quite apart from everything else, by a physical liking for each other. Since she was a child Masha had loved Nike’s full, puckered lips, her endless supply of smiles, the creases of hidden laughter at the corners of her mouth, her rustling red hair; and in just the same way Nike had liked Masha’s diminutiveness, her little feet, her gawkiness, the delicacy in every aspect of her being.

Masha for her part would unhesitatingly have preferred to be Nike than herself. Nike, of course, didn’t lose time thinking about things like that. She had all she needed in herself.

And now Butonov had joined them together in some sacramental way, like Jacob marrying two sisters. They could have been called comrades-in-arms. Jacob entered the tents, took the sisters, took their handmaidens, and they were one family. And what after all is jealousy but another form of covetousness? You can’t possess another person. Well then, let it be: everybody would be brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. She smiled to herself, thinking about utopian Chernyshevsky and the grand brothel in one or other of the dreams of his heroine in What Is to Be Done?

Nothing unique, nothing personal. All of it boring and bereft of talent. Are we free or not? Where does our awareness of shame and indecency come from? By the time she got back to Moscow, she had written Nike a poem:

A rift between the tree trunk and its shadow;

a rift between the thirst and taking drink;

across the abyss a poem’s swaying ladder

the only way to help us pass the brink.

The shades of sleep, the corridors all gaping,

my only light a captured German torch;

and from contrition there is no escaping:

we do not kill, no ironing we scorch,

don’t slop through puddles, try to hide our errors,

don’t sing forbidden songs, don’t practice guile,

but know, and live in superstitious terror:

the two of us are doing something vile.

She got home around midnight. Alik was waiting for her in the kitchen with a bottle of good Georgian wine. He had finished his experiments and could file their application to emigrate tomorrow if they liked. Only then did it finally sink in for Masha that she would soon be leaving forever.

“That’s splendid. It will put an end to this whole shameful, grisly affair,” she thought. She spent a long evening with Alik, which continued until four in the morning. They talked, made plans, and then Masha fell into a dreamless sleep holding Alik’s hand.

She woke late. Debora Lvovna had not been home for several days. Recently she had often been away on lengthy visits to her ailing sister. The Aliks had already had breakfast and were playing chess. It was a picture of domestic tranquility and even included a cat lying on a cushion on the sofa.

“That’s good! I seem to be recovering,” Masha thought, turning the stiff handle of the coffee mill.

Later they took the sled, and the three of them went to the ice hill. They fell off into the snow, got wet, and were happy.

“Do they have snow in Boston?” Masha asked.

“No, they don’t. But we will go to Utah and ski there, and that will be just as good,” Alik promised.

He always delivered on his promises.

Butonov rang that same evening.

“Not missing me, by any chance?”

The day before, he had seen Masha stamping her feet by his gate but had not opened the door to her because he had a lady visitor, the nice, if fat, translator who had been on his trip with him. They had exchanged glances for the two weeks but no opportunity had presented itself. A soft, lazy woman, very similar as he subsequently realized to his wife Olga, she had writhed like a sleepy cat in Butonov’s arms to the trilling of Masha on the doorbell. Butonov had felt acutely irritated by the translator, Masha, and himself. He needed angular, sharp Masha with her tears and her sighs, not this fatso.

He had been ringing Masha since morning, but first there was no reply because the telephone was unplugged, then Alik picked it up twice and Butonov hung up, and only toward evening did he get through to her. “Please don’t ring anymore,” Masha said.

“When? When can you come? Quickly now,” Butonov said, not hearing what she had said.

“No, I’m not coming. Don’t ring me anymore, Valerii.” Then with a strained, tearful voice she added, “I can’t take any more.”

“Masha, I’m missing you terribly. Have you gone crazy? Are you hurt? It’s a misunderstanding, Masha. I’ll be at your house in twenty-five minutes. Come out then.” He hung up.

Masha was in total confusion. She had decided so splendidly, so firmly, not to see him anymore and had felt a sense of, if not liberation then at least relief, and today had been such fun, with the ice hill and the sunshine. “I won’t go,” Masha decided.

But thirty-five minutes later she threw on a jacket, called to Alik, “I’ll be back in ten minutes!” and rushed down the stairs without stopping to call the lift.

Butonov’s car was waiting by the door. She wrenched the door open and sat down beside him.

“I have to tell you—”

He scooped her into his arms and shoved his hands under her jacket.

“We’ll talk all about it, of course we will, little one.”

The car moved off.

“No, no. I’m not going anywhere. I came out to say I wouldn’t go with you.”

“But we’ve already gone,” Butonov laughed.

This time Alik was offended. “What an appalling way to behave! Can’t you see that?” he berated her late that night when she returned. “Someone goes out for ten minutes and comes back five hours later! What am I supposed to think? That you’ve been run over? Been killed?”

“Please forgive me, for God’s sake. You’re absolutely right, it’s a terrible way to behave.” Masha felt profoundly guilty. And profoundly happy.

Next, Butonov disappeared for a month, and Masha tried with all her might just to accept his disappearance “as fact,” but it was a fact that burned right through her. She ate almost nothing, drank sweet tea, and conducted an interminable inner monologue with her absent lover. Her insomnia was becoming ever more acute.

Alik was alarmed: it was obvious she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He started giving Masha tranquilizers and increased the dose of sedatives. Masha refused to take psychotropic drugs.

“I’m not a lunatic, Alik, I’m an idiot, and you can’t treat that.”

Alik didn’t insist. He saw this as just one more reason why they needed to emigrate as soon as possible.

Nike came to see her twice. Masha talked only about Butonov. Nike cursed him, felt very penitent, and swore the last time she had seen him was in December before he went to Sweden. She also said that he was empty-headed and that the only good thing to come out of the whole saga was that Masha had written so much splendid poetry. Masha obediently read her poems and wondered whether Nike could be trying to deceive her now and whether it was Nike who had been with Butonov when she was ringing at the door.

Alik was doing the rounds of all manner of bureaucratic institutions, assembling a whole mountain of documents. He was in a hurry not only for Masha’s sake: he wanted to get to Boston to carry on with his work, the lack of which was making him feel ill too. They were not emigrating in a straightforward manner: first they would travel to Vienna under the provision for Jews, and then go on to America. It was possible that between Vienna and America they would have a spell in Rome. That depended on the speed with which documents were dealt with by, at that stage, foreign bureaucrats.

To all these complexities there was suddenly added a rebellion by Debora Lvovna. “I’m not emigrating anywhere. I have a sick sister, the only person close to me in the world, and I’ll never leave her.” There then followed the canonical text of a Yiddish mama: “I’ve devoted my whole life to you, you thankless boy, and now . . . that damned Israel: it’s because of them we’ve had troubles all our lives. That damned America, may it come to a bad end.”

In the face of such arguments Alik held his peace and took his mother by the shoulders: “Mother of mine! Can you play tennis? Can you ice-skate? Is there anything in the world you can’t do? Could there maybe be something you don’t know? Some little detail? Be quiet, I beg you. Nobody is going to abandon you. We are going together, and we will support your Fira from America. I will earn a lot of money there.”

Debora Lvovna was quiet for a moment, but then worked herself up into even more of a lather: “What do I need your money for! To hell with your money! Your father and I always despised money. You will ruin the child with your money!”

Alik clutched his head and went out of the room.

When all the documents had been collected, Debora Lvovna categorically refused to go but did give permission for them to emigrate. The exit permits were finally issued, only for Butonov to announce himself again. It happened one morning. Masha got Little Alik ready, took him over to Alexandra, and went to Rastorguevo to say goodbye.

It was a good leave-taking. Masha told Butonov this was the last time he would see her, that she would soon be leaving forever, and she wanted to take every last detail with her in memory. Butonov was agitated: “Forever? Well, of course, you’re right, Masha, quite right. Life here is crap compared to the West, I’ve seen that. But forever . . .”

Masha walked through the house memorizing it all, because she wanted to retain the house in her memory too. Then the two of them went up to the attic. It was as dusty and cluttered as ever. Butonov tripped over the knocked-out seat of a bentwood chair, and picked it up: “Look.”

The center of the seat was pierced through with knife throws, and marks from near misses were all around it. He hung the seat up on a nail.

“This was the main thing I did as a boy.”

He took out a knife, went off to the far end of the attic, and threw it. The blade stuck in the wall right through the middle of the punched-out circle.

Masha pulled the knife out of the wall and went over to Butonov. He thought she wanted to throw it at the target too, but she only weighed it in her hand and gave it back to him.

“Now I know everything about you.”

After that trip Masha began quietly preparing to emigrate. She took all her papers out of the writing-desk drawers and decided what to keep and what to throw away.

The customs officials did not allow manuscripts to be taken out of the country, but Alik knew someone in the embassy, and he promised to send Masha’s papers out through the diplomatic bag. She sat on the floor surrounded by them, rereading every page, pondering each one, and feeling sad. She could suddenly see that everything she had written was only a draft for what she wanted to write, now or some time in the future.

“I’ll compile a collection and call it Insomnia.”

The poems came out to her like wild animals coming out of the forest, complete but invariably with a defect of some kind, a limp in the foreleg, a limp in the first verse.

There is clairvoyance in the nighttime,

all detail hidden by the dark;

of stripes on walls it’s only white ones

that on the paper show their mark.

The baggage that I bear at nighttime,

the cares and trivia fall away:

the brilliant genius of nighttime

by far outshines the light of day.

I have come to love insomnia,

the crystal vistas of the deep:

their gift, a delicate deposit,

dispels all likelihood of sleep.

Masha grew very thin, becoming even more fragile, and the daytime world, which seemed to her so dull in comparison with the world of night, became more fragile too. An angel appeared. At first she could not actually see him but sensed his presence, and sometimes turned around quickly because she thought she might glimpse him that way. When he came to her in a dream, his features were clearer, and the part of the dream in which he appeared was like a color sequence inserted in a black and white film.

He looked slightly different each time and could assume human form: one time he appeared to her in the form of a teacher dressed in white like a fencing instructor, and started teaching her to fly. They were standing on the slope of a living, softly breathing hill, which was also taking an ill-defined part in the lesson.

The teacher indicated a region of the spine to her, below the level of the shoulders and deeper, where a small organ or muscle was located, and Masha knew that she would fly just as soon as she learned the gentle, precise movement which controlled this organ. She concentrated, and it was as if she had pressed a button: her body began very slowly to break free from the mountain, and the mountain gently helped her with the movement. Masha flew clumsily and slowly, but it was already entirely clear to her what she had to do to control the speed and direction of her flight—to wherever she wanted to go and for as long as she wanted to fly.

She raised her head and saw that the translucent people flying above her were strong and free, and she understood that she too could fly in just the same way. Then she slowly came back down, without having tried out all the possible delights.

This flying was not at all like the flight of birds: there was no flapping of wings, no fluttering, no aerodynamics, just an effort of the spirit.

Another time the angel taught her the techniques of a special verbal intellectual wrestling which does not exist in our world. It was as if you had a word in your hand which was a weapon. He put it in her hand, smooth and comfortable in her palm. He turned her hand, and a sharp ray of meaning glinted out of it. Immediately two opponents appeared, one to the right and above her and the second to the left and slightly below her. Both of them were practiced and dangerous enemies, skilled in this martial art. One glinted at her, and she gave a riposte. The second came in close and directed a quick blow at her, but in some miraculous way she managed to deflect it.

There was a razor-sharp dialogue in these attacks, untranslatable but completely clear in its meaning. Both combatants were ridiculing her, pointing out to her how inferior she was and how hopeless her attempts were to compete with their mastery.

To her growing amazement, however, she deflected every blow and with each new movement discovered that the weapon she held was becoming more intelligent and accurate, and that this combat really did seem closest to the art of fencing. The opponent to the right was more vicious and sarcastic, but retreated. Then the second one backed off too. They were gone, and that meant she had won.

Sobbing openly, she threw herself on her teacher’s breast. He said, “Don’t be afraid. You have seen, nobody can harm us.”

Masha cried even more bitterly because of the terrible weakness which was truly her own, because all the intellectual power with which she had prevailed had not been her own but lent to her by her teacher.

Masha experienced a superhuman freedom and an unearthly joy from this new experience, which came from regions and spaces the angel had revealed to her; but for all the novelty and unimaginableness of what was happening, she intuited that the extremes of pleasure she experienced when she was closest to Butonov derived from the same root and were of the same nature. She wanted to ask the angel about this but he did not let her: when he appeared, she subjected herself to his will eagerly and diligently.

When he disappeared, however, sometimes for several days, she felt very low, as if the joy of his presence had inescapably to be paid for by depression, gloom, emptiness, and miserable monologues addressed to the almost nonexistent Butonov: “So dazzling, the light of Tabor daunts us, but far harder to gaze upon the disk whose empty blackness taunts us through all the following days.”

Masha hesitated over whether to tell Alik about this. She was afraid that, ever the rationalist, he would view the matter in a medical rather than a mystical light. In her case, however, the realm of poetry lay between medicine and mysticism, and there she was the ruler.

She decided to approach him from that direction. Late one evening when the whole house was asleep, she began reading him her latest poems:

“I noticed how, angelic guardian,

your powers were looking after me,

as to the rock of sun-warmed granite

I pressed my head, still all at sea;

When from the depths of Freud’s dominions,

from darkling realms where sleep is host,

a wave propelled me to my kingdom,

like flotsam cast up on a coast.

And, as in concrete and in metal

there nestle empty voids, a thing

both void and strong had come to settle

in my room, an angel’s wing.

I thought I saw my angel weeping:

his heavenly eyes discerned with rue

the gruesomeness of lovers’ sleeping,

and wept for me and wept for you.”

“I think, Masha, that is a very good poem.” Alik was genuinely delighted. This was not one of those occasions when he felt obliged to express approval out of family solidarity.

“It’s the truth, Alik. I mean the poem. It’s not metaphor or imagination. His presence is real.”

“Well, of course, Masha, otherwise creativity of any kind would be impossible. It’s a metaphysical realm—” he began, but she interrupted him: “Oh, no! He comes to me, just like you. He’s taught me to fly and much more that I can’t tell you because it can’t be put into words. But here, listen:

“Behold how strained the seagull’s flight,

ungainly wings’ uncertain beating,

the tensing of her neck a fight

with wind and gravity, a cheating,

not to founder in the waves

while finding food beneath the surface.

Yet, Lord, you promise all the homeless

feathered wings and eyes that see,

in place of rags and penny pieces,

to soar and dance in heaven’s breezes

unrehearsed and faultlessly.”

“It’s such a simple little poem, and you wouldn’t really know from it that I was flying, that I was actually there, where flight is as natural . . . as everything . . .”

“You mean, hallucinations?” Alik asked anxiously.

“Oh no. They aren’t hallucinations. It’s like you, like this table, reality. Only slightly different. I can’t explain. I am like Kitty here.” She stroked the cat. “I know everything, I understand everything, but I can’t express it. Only she doesn’t suffer from that and I do.”

“But Masha, I can tell you everything comes through splendidly in your writing. It really works.”

He was speaking gently and calmly, but he was extremely disturbed. “Is it schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis? I’ll phone Volobuev tomorrow and ask him to see what it is.”

Volobuev, a consulting psychiatrist, was a friend of someone who had been in Alik’s class at the university, and in those times the guildlike community of doctors, a legacy from better times and better traditions, had not yet fallen apart.

But Masha was still reciting, unable now to stop:

“And on that day when free as birds,

transformed by my six-winged translator

beyond the wit of their creator,

burst forth in power my random words,

‘Let me depart’ shall be my supplication,

a coat of many colors consummation

of all my sins, ‘at last no more to roam,

Into my Father’s house, my heavenly home.’ ”

Still, Butonov would not leave Masha alone. She went to him in Rastorguevo three times more. It seemed that the note she had struck was so high that there was no going higher—her voice would break, everything would break. Only now, when every meeting felt as if it were the last one, did Butonov admit to himself that Masha had so far eclipsed her prototype, half-forgotten Rosa, that he could no longer even remember the face of his lost horsewoman; and now he no longer saw Masha as being in the likeness of Rosa, but that fleeting love affair seemed to have contained the promise of the present one. The inevitability of parting intensified his passion.

He had dropped the two or three other women who had been a simultaneous but less-than-crucial part of his life. One, whom he actually quite needed to keep sweet for his work, a secretary of the sports organizing committee, had given him to understand that she was offended by his neglect; the second was a client, a young ballerina for whom he had made an exception to his rule that the massage table was a work surface and not a suitable place for dalliance, who had fallen out of contention automatically when she moved to Riga. He really hadn’t seen Nike since December. They had phoned each other a few times, expressed a polite desire to meet, but neither had made the least effort to do so.

Butonov had a major career decision looming. He was fed up with sports medicine, the unvarying impact injuries he was constantly dealing with, and the no-holds-barred politicking associated with trips abroad. A timely offer had materialized: a rehabilitation center was being set up for high-ranking Communist Party and government officials and their families, and Butonov was a likely candidate to manage it. This held out a number of interesting possibilities. At the age of thirty-five his wife Olga had reached her professional ceiling, as happens with mathematicians, and she was egging Valerii on: a new direction; state-of-the-art equipment; you can’t spend your whole life running your fingers over the same old pressure points, etc.

Ivanov, by now wrinkled and yellow and with the passing years looking ever more like a Buddhist monk, warned him, “You don’t have the brain for it, and you don’t have the stomach for it.” His remark contained both respectful appreciation and a subtle put-down.

Butonov rated Nike’s judgment highly, especially since her very successful intervention in his interior decorating, and decided to consult her. He met her by the Maly theater and they went to a ghastly little restaurant on Taganskaya Square which, lying at the intersection of their routes, was at least convenient.

Nike was looking on top of the world, although everything about her was slightly de trop: the long fur coat, the short skirt, the large rings, and her flowing mane of hair. They chatted about this and that in an easy, cheerful way. Butonov explained his problem to her. She became unexpectedly severe, frowned, and told him abruptly: “Valerii, you know, in our family we have a very good tradition, which is to stay as far away from the authorities as possible. I had a close relative, a Jewish dentist, who put it splendidly: ‘In my heart I love Soviet power so much, but my body just won’t react to her.’ If you take this job, you will have to spend all your time cuddling that body.” Nike swore just within the bounds of acceptability, fluently and with great artistry.

Butonov felt a huge sense of relief. Her jocular swearing had answered his question. The Fourth Directorate’s rehabilitation center was off, as he gratefully informed Nike there and then.

Their friendly feelings for each other reached a sufficient temperature for them to finish their shashlyks and get into Butonov’s beige Moskvich and for Butonov, without needing to ask any further questions, to make a U-turn on Taganskaya Square and head for Rastorguevo.

Masha was suffering the most unbearable form of insomnia, when all possible sedatives have been taken and arms, legs, back, everything is asleep except for a small center in the brain which is transmitting the same signal over and over again: “I can’t sleep . . . I can’t sleep . . .”

She slipped out of bed, where Big Alik was sleeping with his knees drawn up to his chin, looking very small in this fetal position. She went to the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, put her hands under the cold tap, washed, and lay down to rest on the couch in the kitchen. She closed her eyes and again heard: “I can’t sleep . . . I can’t sleep . . .”

He was standing in the doorway, her usual angel, clad in somber dark red raiment. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but his eyes were deep blue, as if he were looking through the slits of a theatrical mask. Masha noticed that the doorway was a false one: the real door was farther to the right. He stretched out his hands to her, placed them over her ears, and even squeezed a little.

“Now he’s going to teach me clairvoyance.” She understood that she had to take off her dressing gown. She stood there now in her long nightgown.

He was behind her and pressing her ears and eyes closed, and with his middle fingers began to massage across her forehead and right down to the bridge of her nose. Delicate waves of color floated toward and away from her, rainbows extending to a great range of hues. He was waiting for her to stop him, and she said, “Enough.”

The fingers stopped immediately. In a beam of pale yellow light with an unpleasant green tinge, she saw two people, a man and a woman. They were very young and slender. They came nearer as if she were watching through binoculars until she could recognize them. They were her parents. They were holding hands and aware only of each other. Her mother was wearing a familiar light blue dress with dark blue stripes, and she was younger than Masha herself. What a pity they could not see her.

“This can’t go on,” Masha understood. He began stroking across her forehead once more and pressing on some particular point.

“Butonov’s art, pressure points,” Masha thought. She stopped the beam of yellow light and saw the house in Rastorguevo, the closed side gate and herself beside it. The car was inside the main gate, and the small light was burning in Grandmother’s half. She passed through the side gate without opening it and approached the lighted window, or rather the window approached her, and rising easily into the air, she flew up and dived smoothly inside.

They did not see her, although she was right beside them. Nike had thrown back her long neck, and she could have touched it. Nike was smiling, even perhaps laughing, but the sound was turned off. Masha ran her finger down Butonov’s gleaming chest, but he did not notice. His lips trembled and parted, and revealed his front teeth, one of which was set slightly off true.

“Turn around, please, and go back,” Nike said quietly to Butonov, looking out through the window at Ryazan highway.

“Is that what you want?” Butonov asked in some surprise, but did not argue, engaged reverse gear and turned the car.

He stopped in Usachevka. They parted warmly, with a good, live kiss, and Butonov was not in the least put out. He could take no for an answer. In these matters nobody owes anyone anything. It was still early evening, light snow was falling, and Katya and Liza were waiting up for their mother.

“So much for Rastorguevo,” Nike thought, and lightly ran up the stairs to the third floor.

Masha was standing in the corridor between the kitchen and the living room in an icy draught and had a sudden revelation, as if she had been struck by lightning, that she had once before stood in her nightgown in this exact same freezing current of air. The door behind her would open in a minute and something dreadful would be behind it. She ran her fingers across her forehead to the bridge of her nose, rubbed the middle of her forehead: wait, stop . . .

But the horror behind the door kept growing. She forced herself to look around. The false door moved slightly.

Masha ran into the living room and pushed the door to the balcony. It flew open without creaking. The cold which blew in from outside was fresh and joyful, and the air behind her was icy and stifling.

Masha stepped out onto the balcony. The snow was falling gently and it was a choir with a thousand voices, as if every snowflake carried its own musical note, and this moment too was something she recognized. This had happened before. She turned; something dreadful was standing behind the living-room door and it was coming nearer.

“Oh, I know, I know.” Masha climbed onto the box the television had come in, from there onto the long window box fixed to the side of the balcony, and made the inner movement which raises you into the air.

His legs drawn up to his stomach, her husband Alik slept on; in the next room, in exactly the same position, her son was sleeping. It was the start of the spring equinox, a glorious festival of the heavens.