The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

15

THE FOOTPATH WOUND ALTERNATELY UPHILL, THEN DOWNhill, and Pavel Alekseevich marveled that the view here—constructed of various planes—was layered, as in the theater, so that a tree in the distance was as visible as the grass alongside the path. At each turn new details of the local world order opened out before him: it turned out that the bed of the stream was raised, and that the water flowed thick and slow. A large pink fish was motionless in the water and looked at Pavel Alekseevich with an unpiscine gaze that was both benevolent and intrigued.

The next turn revealed a low-lying, curly garden. In the garden stood a bench nailed together from white planks. A tall woman got up from the bench and came out to meet him, tapping a striped cane ahead of herself. This could only be Vasilisa, no one else. Her eyes were covered by a white bandage like the blindfolds children use when playing blindman’s bluff. But there was something else that was strange about her face. When she came closer, he saw that above the bandage, in the middle of her forehead, there was a large—more bovine than human in size—bright blue eye with thick girlish eyelashes.

“Pavel Alekseevich, I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been sitting and sitting, and you never come.” Vasilisa rejoiced. They were already next to each other, and he embraced her.

“Hello, Vasilisa, sweetie.”

“We’ve met again, thank the Lord,” she sniffled. Pavel Alekseevich nodded. The eye had two tear ducts, so it was neither left nor right and very symmetrically placed in the center of her forehead. “They took away the old eyes and gave her a new one?” he thought, but, it turned out, he said aloud. Vasilisa laughed. Pavel Alekseevich realized that he had never heard her laugh before.

“They didn’t take them away. They operated on them. On these, the little ones. They said that only you could remove the bandage. After I told you something. But they’re clever: they didn’t tell me what to say. So I’ve been sitting here on this bench and thinking all the time about what to say to you.”

“And?” he inquired. “And what is it?”

“Forgive me, Pavel Alekseevich,” she said ingenuously. Pavel Alekseevich was astonished beyond words. What sort of child’s play was this: planting her on that bench and punishing her, ordering her to ask for forgiveness . . .

“It’s all silliness. It doesn’t matter.” He waved her off.

“What do you mean? I grouped you with the evildoers. Forgive me. And now take off the bandage. Please.”

They returned to the bench. Vasilisa shuffled with her stick, and Pavel Alekseevich supported her by her elbow. How strange: didn’t that beautiful bovine eye see anything?

The bandage had been applied competently, the cloth was high quality—imported, apparently. He removed the bandage and unfastened the protective cap from one eye. Under it there was yet a layer of gauze. Carefully he detached it. All the sutures were internal. The eye was swollen, and the eyelids slightly stuck together.

“Well, open your eye, Vasilisa.”

She hesitated. Then opened it. She blocked the other with the palm of her hand. She looked at him with one eye.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Pavel Alekseevich.”

“And the second one?” he asked.

“No, I’ll wait for a while with the second one. I’m more used to it that way. So, have you forgiven me then?”

“I was never mad at you, you fool.”

She laughed again. Her laugh was a girl’s, bashful. Resolutely, he turned her head in its carpet-design headscarf toward him and undid the second eye. She squealed, now entirely like a little child. Then she placed her hand over her mouth and said pleadingly: “All right. You go now. God willing, we’ll see each other again. There are a lot of things to do . . .”

He rose from the bench, sighed, and asked after all the question that he had been wanting to ask from the very beginning.

“Listen, Vasilisa, why were you using a stick to walk? Doesn’t that third eye see anything?”

“It’s worthless. Doesn’t see a thing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not quite. I could see from afar what you were really like.”

“And?”

“It’s hard to put into words . . . In the image and likeness you are . . .”

He waved his hand and set off.