NINE

WATERLOO BRIDGE

Translated by Sally Laird.

These days — in the street or on the bus — they'd call her «aunty» or «gran».

And she was in fact Granny Olya to her grandchildren. Her daughter, a big heavy woman, a full-grown geography teacher, still lived with her mother, while the daughter's husband, a small-time studio photographer (a misalliance stemming from a holiday romance) — this husband of hers came and went, sometimes appearing, sometimes not.

Granny Olya herself had long lived without a husband; he kept going off on business trips, and finally returned — but not back home; said to hell with it and chucked all his possessions, clothes, shoes, his film books — left her all this stuff she had no use for.

So she and her daughter drooped, the two of them, and did nothing about returning the things to the runaway; it was painful to start phoning, searching for so-and-so, let alone meeting so-and-so face to face.

The Dad clearly wasn't too keen either, it was obviously awkward — the happy newlywed husband, complete with little son, turning up to claim his property at the nest of his grandchildren and granny-wife.

Maybe, reckoned Granny Olya, it was HER, the new wife, who'd said to hell with it, we'll buy what we need in the morning.

Or maybe she was rich, unlike Granny Olya, who'd got used to potato salad and vegetable oil and bought her boots at the orthopaedic shop for the handicapped — poor, childish things with laces, extra-wide to allow for bunions.

She was shabby, Granny Olya, meek and goggle-eyed beneath her glasses, with a bit of down for hair, full figure and stout legs.

She was, however, a remarkably kind creature, forever taking care of somebody, staggering off with shopping bags to mouldy old relatives, wending her way round the various hospitals, even making the journey to tend the graves — and always unaccompanied, mind you.

The geographer-daughter lent no support in these enterprises of her mother's, though she'd lay herself out to assist her so-called friends, feeding them, listening to their tales but not Granny Olya's, no way.

In short, Granny Olya was always out and about — she'd cobble together her potato salad, fry up a bit of cheap fish and be out of the house, while the geographer-daughter, a stay-at-home type like many family people, would summon her friends round for wide-ranging discussions of life, involving many examples from personal experience.

The geographer's husband, the man from the studio, was generally absent; as a rule he led his existence on the side, under the red light of the photo lab, where all sorts of things might be happening. Once upon a time the geographer-daughter had passed through this red light herself — she'd returned swell-looking from holiday, a hulking great wench in glasses with puffy eyes and a mouth that looked somehow frozen, then went and brought home this photography worker (divorced to boot, with no home of his own) to her respectable Mum, and in those days Dad, in their three-room professor's apartment, the fool.

That was all history, water under the bridge, and Granny Olya, herself left with nothing after the professor's departure — no work experience, no prospect of a pension, not a ruble to call her own and, what's more, with just a thoroughfare to live in (the photographer and geographer had quickly taken over the separate room, the so-called study, after Dad had left; previously they and the children had lived just in the back room, but now they could spread themselves out — a great help where family life's concerned — while Granny Olya slept on the couch in the living room, and now she was stuck there.)

Nowadays, in her new profession, Granny Olya did plenty of tramping and trekking about among the puddles: as a newly-hatched insurance agent she went knocking on strangers' doors, got herself invited in, wrote out insurance policies on kitchen tables, forever with her stout briefcase, a kindly lady with a sweaty nose and a flabby neck like a mother goose's.

Unattractive, garrulous, devoted, arousing in others total trust and goodwill (though not in her daughter, who didn't give a pin for her mother and sided completely with the departed Dad) — such was Granny Olya, who lived not at all for herself, stuffing her head with other people's affairs and in passing relating to new acquaintances her own life-story as a brilliant singer, a graduate of the music academy, who'd married and followed her husband to his job in a wildlife reserve at the back of beyond, where he wrote his dissertation and she raised children, etcetera etcetera, in proof of which Granny Olya would even sing a snatch from the romance «My song for you, so languorous and gentle…», laughing together with her astonished listeners, who were quite taken aback by the effect, with the glasses all ringing in the sideboard, and the pigeons taking flight from the windowsill.

It goes without saying that the daughter, and indeed the grandchildren, couldn't stand the old bat's singing, especially since the academy had trained Granny Olya for operatic rather than home singing, with the rare timbre, moreover, of a dramatic soprano.

But even old dames can make fools of themselves, and in this instance the burden and bother of making fruitless calls at strangers' doorsteps apparently got too much for Granny Olya, who all of a sudden fluttered off to the cinema just to please herself: there it would be warm, there was a cafe, a foreign film, and — this was interesting — lots of her contemporaries were crowding the entrance, old dears like herself with shopping bags.

There was a veritable witches' sabbath going on round the doors of the little theatre, and Granny Olya, persuading herself, against her better judgement, that she could do with a little treat, and drawn on irresistibly by strange sensations, made her way towards the box office, bought herself a ticket, and entered the unfamiliar warmth of the cinema.

The cafe was teeming with people, young couples among them, and Granny Olya too bought herself a sandwich, a pastry and some dubious sweet drink — all costing a ridiculous sum, but an outing's an outing — then, wiping her nose with her husband's checked hankie, and seized by an inexplicable excitement, she entered the cinema along with the crowd, seated herself, took off her fur hat with its elastic band, removed her scarf, unbuttoned her threadbare winter coat, a once-elegant gabardine with fox-fur collar that didn't bear close scrutiny in the mirror — and at this point the lights went out and paradise arose.

Granny Olya saw upon the screen all her dreams come true: herself when young in the wildlife reserve, with a pure lovely face, slender as a reed; and her husband, too, as he should have been, in that other life which for some reason she had never had.

Life was full of love, the heroine was dying, as all of us will die, in illness and distress, but on the way there there had been a waltz by candlelight.

By the end Granny Olya was weeping, and others around her were blowing their noses. Then, dragging her feet, Granny Olya set off once more like a worker bee to collect her dues, once again kissed two locked doors and, defeated on the professional front, crept home.

A bus with steaming windows, the steaming metro, one block on foot, third floor, rich smells of home, children's piping voices in the kitchen, one's own, dear, familiar — stop.

And suddenly Granny Olya, as if in day-dream, saw before her — so full of tenderness and concern — the face of Robert Taylor.

The following day she rushed off again, early in the morning, to her assigned district, found her clients at home, collected their money, made several new acquaintances in the communal kitchens, persuaded them to take out an advantageous life insurance policy and en route — this was the greatest temptation of all — to collect, by way of a bonus, compensation for all their injuries, fractures and operations; and people listened to her eagerly and pondered their fate, business was going well, and then Granny Olya dashed headlong for the familiar cinema in time for the matinee.

But another film, a film for kids, turned out to be on that day.

At the box-office, however, Granny Olya ran into a half-familiar face, one of yesterday's old ladies — not quite so old yet — in an astrakhan hat; she too had rushed in early to the cinema and, much put out, was now enquiring where the film programme could be found, obviously intending to go off to another cinema where her favourite movie was showing.

Granny Olya pricked up her ears, made the same enquiry, got to the root of the matter and the following day — only the following day — minced her way in solitude to a rendezvous with her beloved, and once more returned to that enchanted world of her other life.

On this occasion she felt less self-conscious with the other old ladies, and indeed with herself; and at the exit she saw the happy, tear-stained faces and wiped her own eyes with the big man's hankie that had been left her as a souvenir, along with woolen men's underwear — soldier's underwear, they called it; she put it on in frosty weather, and wore the long johns at night, and her daughter wore her dad's checked shirts to school under her pinafore: life has to go on!

«Oh Lord», thought Granny Olya, honest and pure as a crystal, «What's happening to me, I've been bewitched. And the worst of it is, these old ladies run round from show to show — quite dreadful…»

She didn't consider herself an old lady — there was so much to look forward to still: Granny Olya was valued at work, her clients respected her, she was the mainstay of the family now — she'd even bought an aquarium for her grandchildren, had gone with them to the Pet Market to purchase the fish, hoping to forget THAT, the main thing (Granny Olya was able to control her passions, able to sacrifice herself — take, for instance, her life at the wildlife reserve.)

But there was no getting round it, Granny Olya said to herself after a routine visit to her clients: again and again, no matter what the subject of conversation, she'd find herself uttering the beloved name — Robert — and the title of the film — «Waterloo Bridge» — and all the details of the actors' lives.

People would attempt to talk to her about their own affairs, and once again Granny Olya would mention, let's say, the show she'd been to the day before yesterday, and where the film would be showing next.

She herself was already aware that she was sliding downhill, especially in the eyes of her clients — aware that she no longer attended so assiduously to their tales, no longer discussed with such eager attention all their intrigues with neighbours, their lawsuits, betrayals, strategies; these days, she realised, she listened to all this rather mechanically, nodding and snuffling as she searched for her hankie, but amid all this dross, this flotsam and jetsam of life, the main thing — HIS torments — shone through. And, incidentally, HER torments too.

And finally Granny Olya knew what she would do with her life.

She put paid to the rules.

Her chief purpose now, Granny Olya believed, was not to issue insurance policies and collect payments due, but to instil in her clients, submerged as they were in earthly cares — to instil in them the thought that there was another life, a different, heavenly, superior life, now showing — for instance — at 7 and 9 pm at the cinema on Karetny Street.

Her eyes would shine through her thick-lensed glasses.

Why exactly she did this Granny Olya did not know, but it had become essential to her to bring people happiness, a new happiness, and to recruit yet more and more fans for «Robbie»; and towards these occasional new recruits (all female) she felt a maternal tenderness, while at the same time displaying a mother's strictness, for she was their guide to that other world, and the guardian of its rules and traditions. She already possessed a thick notebook of quotations from newspaper articles concerning Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh.

There too were pasted portraits of the actors and stills from the film; and here the son-in-law, for whom no use had ever previously been found, was put to work beneath the red lamp of that dubious darkroom — even the black sheep can come in handy!

The down-side was the hordes of old dears and grannies who now flocked to the holy rites; it was a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah these days, with sobbing, raptures, and poems circulating from hand to hand.

«Robbie's» date of birth was found, and this jubilee of theirs was duly celebrated in cinema foyers with sweet wine and vodka, and there was uproar before the film; but Granny Olya, like a strict high priestess, celebrated alone in her kitchen at home.

When they met, they would tell one another how it had been for them. Granny Olya did not allow herself to share in this nonsense; she kept her secret to herself, but in the still of the night she herself composed verses and then, unable to restrain herself, would choose an appropriate moment to confide them to her clients.

She couldn't read them to the other old ladies: if you read something to them, they're apt immediately to take revenge with home-made nonsense of their own: «And many girls did thrill to his sweet touch» — ugh! — or something of that ilk.

Granny Olya murmured her lofty verses to specially selected clients. She read hurriedly, snuffling, and her glasses filled with tears.

The clients suffered and looked away, as they used to do when, deeply moved, she would sing at full throttle; and Granny Olya understood full well the awkwardness of her situation, but was quite unable to take herself in hand.

A person isn't usually aware of where, when, or how he's been overtaken by passion, but when passion strikes, he's incapable of controlling himself, of making judgements, of going into the consequences; he'll submit joyfully, finding at last his true path in life, no matter what that may be.

«It's all quite harmless,» Granny Olya reassured herself, happily falling asleep, «I'm an intelligent woman, and this concerns no one else but me; it's my business and no one else's, when all's said and done».

And she drifted off into dream, on one occasion even finding herself driving along with Robert Taylor in an open convertible; both of them were sitting in the back, and there was no one else in the LANDAU — not even a driver — and HE, seated devotedly beside Granny Olya, had got his arm half-way around her shoulders.

That wasn't the sort of thing one told other people.

Once she experienced a moment of shame, for — as the geographer-daughter remarked — night's not the time to go gadding about.

On her way home after an evening show in the godforsaken outskirts (where there's a will there's always a way), Granny Olya was walking with a swinging step when she was overtaken by a young man, tall, heavy, in a hat with earflaps (Granny Olya herself was walking about la jeune, her hat at a jaunty angle, all but singing out loud the words she was crooning: «I opened the window…») and this young man, catching up with Granny Olya, remarked in passing:

«What little feet you have!»

«I beg your pardon?»

He stopped in his tracks and asked outright:

«What size do you take?»

«Thirty-nine,» the astonished Granny Olya replied.

«Little feet,» the young man responded sadly, and at this Granny Olya darted past him — home, home, to the tram, her briefcase bumping.

But at night, when she had time for sober reflection, the pitiful, sick appearance of the young man, his shuffling gait, his unshaven, neglected face and above all his dark moustache disturbed poor Granny Olya. Who was he?

She tried to weave some familiar story about him: his mother had died, he'd suffered a nervous breakdown, lost his job, his married sister couldn't be bothered with him, chased him away, and so on, but something just didn't quite fit.

The following evening, disregarding the warning cries from her daughter, Granny Olya set off once again to the film — to the same cinema, and the very same show.

Now it dawned on her, as she looked once more at Robert Taylor, who it was that had met her on the dark street after the film. Who it was that had walked there, ill and neglected, yearning, unshaven, but still with his moustache.

And indeed, when you come to think of it, who else could have dragged himself there, in search of his beloved, when the whole world had forgotten all about her? Who else could have been wandering in those godforsaken outskirts in 1954? What other poor, sick shade in a tatty coat, abandoned by everyone, could have wandered there, in time to present himself, on Waterloo Bridge, to the last soul of all, herself forgotten by everyone, rejected, abused, a mere rag, a doormat — to present himself, moreover, at literally her last step in life, when she was just about to fly away…

THE HOUSE WITH A FOUNTAIN

Translated by Ellen Pinchuk.

A girl was killed in an explosion, but then brought back to life. [t was like this: the relatives were told she was dead, but they couldn't claim the body right away (they were all together in the bus, but she had been standing in front and they'd been in the back when the explosion happened). She was a young girl — just 15 — and she was thrown back by the blast.

While waiting for the ambulances and for all the wounded and dead to be carried away, her father held the girl in his arms, although it was clear she was dead, and the doctor had pronounced her so. But they had to take her to the hospital anyway, and her father and mother got into the ambulance and rode with their child to the morgue.

She was lying on the stretcher as though alive, but there was no pulse or breathing. The parents were sent home, though they didn't want to go, but it wasn't yet time to claim the body. Not until the autopsy was done and cause of death determined as required by law and medical practice.

But her father, driven mad by grief and also being a devout Christian, decided to kidnap his daughter. He took his wife home — she was practically unconscious — survived a conversation with his mother-in-law, woke their paramedic neighbor and took her white coat. Then, taking all the money in the house, he went to the nearest hospital, found an empty ambulance (it was already two in the morning) with a gurney and a young male nurse. Dressed in the white coat, he penetrated the hospital where his daughter was being held, passed the security guard, descended the staircase into the basement, and easily entered the morgue with no one around. He found his child and, with the help of the male nurse, laid her on a stretcher and carried his load into the cargo elevator up to the third floor, to post-op intensive care. He had carefully studied the layout of the hospital while keeping vigil in the waiting room.

He let the nurse go and, after a quick conversation with the emergency room doctor on duty, he passed on the wad of money and placed his daughter in the doctor's arms.

As there weren't any medical charts, the doctor apparently decided that the father had called an ambulance and brought the patient (or probably the corpse) to the nearest hospital. The doctor knew perfectly well that the girl was not alive, but he needed money badly — his wife had just given birth (also a girl) — and his nerves were on end. His mother didn't like his wife and they took turns crying on his shoulder, and the kid was also crying, and then there were his night shifts. He had to find money to rent an apartment. The (clearly) crazy father of this fairy tale princess was offering him enough for six months' rent.

Without saying a word, the doctor began his work, as if a live patient was before him. He told the father to put on surgical clothes and sat him on a bed in the unit, since this sick man was bent on staying with his daughter and was saying they had the same blood type.

The girl was lying there, white as marble, with a face of extraordinary beauty, and her father watched her from the bed with a strange expression on his face. One pupil kept drifting to the side, and when he blinked, his lids separated with great difficulty.

The doctor observed him and asked a nurse to give him a cardiogram, then to give this new patient a shot. The father passed out, but not right away. The girl looked like Sleeping Beauty, all wired up to equipment. The doctor took care, doing everything possible, and no one was watching the father with that lopsided gaze of his anymore. Basically, the young doctor was a fanatic. Nothing was more important to him than a serious, interesting case, than a patient (no matter who, name and status did not matter) on the verge of death.

The father slept, and in his dream he met his daughter. That is, he went to visit her, as he had at summer camp. He took some food, a meatball sandwich, for some reason. And that's all. He got on a bus (a bus, yet again) on a beautiful summer evening, somewhere near the Sokol metro station, and went to some heavenly place. In a field between soft green hills there was a huge grey house with arches up to the sky, and when he passed through the giant gates and entered the courtyard, there, on an emerald meadow, was a fountain, as high as the house, and it had a single jet culminating in a shimmering plume. The summer sunset stretched on and the father strolled with pleasure toward an entrance to the right of the arch and walked up toward a high floor. His daughter was there, looking off somewhere. As though this were her life, which no longer had anything to do with him. Something of her own.

The apartment was huge, with high ceilings and broad windows, and it faced south, toward the shade and the fountain on the side, now lit by the setting sun. The fountain was even taller than the windows.

«I brought you a meatball sandwich, just the way you like it,» said the father.

He went up to a table near the window and put down his package, thought a minute, then unwrapped it. A strange sandwich was lying there, with its two pieces of cheap black bread. To show his daughter the meatball, he opened the sandwich. Inside was (and he saw it immediately) a raw human heart. The father worried that the heart was uncooked and couldn't be eaten. He folded it back up in the paper and said, awkwardly, «I brought the wrong sandwich. I'll bring you another one.»

But his daughter came closer and stared at the sandwich with a strange expression on her face. Then her father stuffed the package in his pocket and covered it with his hand, so that she couldn't get it.

«Give it to me, Dad. I'm hungry. I'm so hungry.»

«You can't eat that stuff.»

«No. Give it to me,» she said, heavily.

She reached for his pocket with her deft, very deft, hand, but her father understood that if his daughter managed to get the sandwich, she would die.

Then, turning away, he took out the package, opened it, and quickly started to eat the raw heart himself. His mouth filled with blood. He ate the black bread with blood.

«Now I'm dying,» he thought, «How fortunate that I'm going before her.»

«Open your eyes, you hear me!» someone was saying.

He unglued his lids with difficulty and saw as if in a fog, the distorted face of the young doctor.

«I hear you,» said the father.

«What's your blood type?»

«The same as my daughter's, I told you.»

«Are you sure?»

«Yes. Sure.»

He was immediately taken somewhere and his left arm was tied with a tourniquet. A needle was inserted into his vein.

«How is she?» asked the father.

«Meaning?» asked the doctor, busy with the task at hand.

«Is she alive?»

«What did you think?» answered the doctor in passing.

«A live?!»

«Lie down, lie down,» exclaimed the kind doctor.

The father laid there, listening to someone snoring nearby, and he wept.

Then they worked on him and he again went off somewhere. Again, he was surrounded by greenery, but he was awakened by a noise: his daughter, on the next bed, was snoring loudly, as if she didn't have enough air. Her father looked at her from the side. Her face was white, her mouth slightly open. Live blood flowed between the father's arm and the daughter's. He felt light, and tried to make the blood go faster, go entirely into his daughter. He wanted to die so that she should live. Then, he found himself in that same apartment, in the huge grey house. His daughter was gone. He went quietly to look for her, searching all the nooks and crannies of the luxurious apartment with its many windows, but couldn't find a living soul. He sat on the couch, then lay down. He was calm, happy, as if his daughter were doing fine somewhere, living well, and he could rest. He (in his dream) was falling asleep when his daughter appeared like a whirlwind swirling through the room, and was suddenly next to him like a spinning column of wind, howling, shaking everything around her, digging her nails into the bend in his right arm all the way beneath the skin, pricking him hard. He screamed in horror and opened his eyes. The doctor had just given him an injection in his right arm.

The girl was lying beside him, breathing heavily, but no longer wheezing. Her father raised himself onto his elbows and saw that his left arm had been freed from the tourniquet and bandaged. He addressed the doctor:

«Doctor, I need to call right away.»

«What for,» exclaimed the doctor, «it's still too early. Lie down, or I'll lose you.»

But before he left, he nevertheless gave over his cell phone and the father called his wife. No one was home. His wife and mother-in-law had probably gotten up early and gone to the morgue and were probably frantic, unable to understand where the child's body had gone.

The girl was doing better, but had not regained consciousness. Her father tried to stay near her in intensive care, pretending he was dying. The night doctor had gone and the poor father had no more money, but they gave him a cardiogram and left him there. The night doctor had apparently made arrangements with someone to let him stay, or else the cardiogram showed bad results.

The father thought about what to do. He couldn't go downstairs, wasn't allowed to call. Around him were strangers and busy ones. He thought about what his two women must be feeling, his «girls», as he called his wife and his mother-in-law. His heart was throbbing. He was given an IV, just like his daughter.

Then he fell asleep, and when he awoke, his daughter was gone.

«Nurse, where is the girl who was lying here?»

«Why do you ask?»

«I'm her father, see? Where is she?»

«She's in surgery. Don't worry and don't get up. You shouldn't.»

«What's wrong with her?»

«I don't know.»

«Dear girl, please call a doctor!»

«They're all busy.»

An old man moaned. In the next room the young doctor was doing some operation on an old lady and was speaking to her loudly like to the village idiot, trying to humor her.

«Well, granny, want some soup? (pause) What kind of soup do you want?»

«Mmmm,» mumbled the old lady in a tinny, non-human voice.

«How about meatball soup? (pause) Want some meatball soup? Did you ever try soup with meatballs?»

Suddenly, the old lady answered in her tinny bass.

«Meatballs, eat alls.»

«Good for you,» the doctor exclaimed.

The father laid there worrying. His daughter was being operated on somewhere, his wife was going mad with grief somewhere, his mother-in-law next to her… The young doctor checked him over, gave him another injection, and he fell asleep.

In the evening, he got up quietly, barefoot, wearing only a shirt, and left. He got to the staircase without being noticed and descended the cold steps, like a ghost. He made it to the basement corridor and followed arrows saying «Office of Decedent Affairs.»

Some guy in a white coat called out to him.

«Hey, what are you doing here?»

«I'm from the morgue,» the father replied suddenly. «I'm lost.»

«What do you mean, from the morgue?»

«I came from there, but I left my documents. I want to go back for them, but where is it?»

«I don't get it,» said the white coat, taking him by the arm and leading him down the corridor.

«So you just got up,» he asked.

«I came to life, no one was around. I got up, but decided to go back to be examined.»

«Strange,» answered his escort.

They arrived at the morgue but were greeted with obscenities from the paramedic. The father listened to his protests and asked, «Is my daughter here? She was supposed to be brought here after her operation.»

He said her last name.

«No. She ain't here! Driving me nuts! Looked for her all morning! She ain't here! They made everyone run in circles! And now another nutcase! Did he escape from the funny farm? Where'd he come from?»

«Found him roaming around in the walkway,» answered the white coat.

«Call security,» said the paramedic, and started swearing again.

«Let me call home,» asked the father. «I remember, I was lying in intensive care on the third floor. I lost my memory. I came here after the explosion on Varshavka.»

The white coats fell silent. The explosion on Varshavka happened the day before. They took him, barefoot and shaking, to a table with a telephone.

His wife answered and immediately started to weep.

«You! You! Where did you get to! Theytookher body… We don't know where! And you're out wandering! And not a kopeck in the house! Not even enough for a taxi! You took it, didn't you?»

«Yes. I was unconscious, in the hospital, in the emergency room.»

«Where? Which one?»

«The same one she's in.»

«Where is she? Where?» his wife howled.

«I don't know. I don't know myself. I'm practically naked. Bring me some clothes. I'm standing here barefoot in the morgue. What hospital is this?»

«What are you doing there? I don't understand any of this,» said his wife, still weeping.

He gave the phone to the white coat. He gave the address calmly, as if nothing were wrong, then hung up.

The paramedic brought him a robe and some old, beat up slippers, apparently feeling sorry for this live human being, and sent him to the security post.

His wife and mother-in-law arrived with sunken, aged faces. They helped him to dress, shoes and all, embraced him and listened to his story with tears of happiness. Then they all sat on a couch to wait, having been told that their girl had made it through the operation and was in intensive care in serious condition.

In two weeks she was walking again. Her father took her for strolls along the hospital corridors and kept telling her how he'd known she'd been alive after the explosion, that it was just shock. Shock! No one else had noticed, but he knew right away.

However, he never breathed a word about the raw human heart that he had to eat so that she wouldn't. But, after all, it was in a dream, and dreams don't count…