The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

9

TANYA WENT TO THE HOSPITAL EVERY DAY AND ASSISTED Vitalka with his needs, from bathing to eating. His right hand was in a cast, and with only the left he had a hard time reading—turning pages was a challenge . . . He somewhat exaggerated his infirmity and allowed himself even to be capricious. Every day, with Vika’s shopping bag—which she had not yet returned—Tanya traveled from Profsoiuznaya to Sklifosovsky Hospital. Friends of the Goldbergs contributed a pile of money, and Tanya translated it into various culinary delicacies. Her workouts at the stove entirely replaced her exercises in jewelry-making. Tanya dropped in at Vika’s studio only once, grabbed three pairs of underpants, woolen socks, and her notepad—everything she owned.

Every Saturday Gena came in from Obninsk. They would eat supper, drink a bottle of Georgian wine, sleep on the couch pressed flat by bony old Goldberg, and travel together to visit Vitalka at the hospital. The childlike ease of their relations perplexed Gena: it was as if they were five years old, playing on swings or at blindman’s bluff, guessing in the dark, touching the face and shoulders of whoever happened to fall into their casual embraces . . . Nature had provided them each other for their needs, and no superfluous words occurred between them . . .

Vitalik lay in the hospital for a month and a half. His injuries ultimately proved to be not as grave as they were complex. His broken nose was reset, the new one no worse than the old, and his concussion also was nothing out of the ordinary, but his broken elbow required some serious tinkering. They performed one operation, which turned out not as well as it might and led to pseudarthrosis. The doctors had to perform a second operation, after which the joint lost all flexibility. Either those masters of fisticuffs really knew how to produce the worst possible fractures, or Vitalka’s particular brand of bad luck had been at work.

Be what may, they released him at the end of winter, and Tanya brought him home with a great deal of celebration and even arranged a small party for close friends to mark the occasion. The next Saturday, as usual, Gena arrived from Obninsk. Vitalik had been home three days already. Crossing the threshold, Gena immediately sensed that he had been replaced. He was madly disappointed, but not surprised. He looked Tanya right in the eye, but she felt not the least discomfort. The three of them ate dinner together. On the table there was a fat yeasty pie that breathed warmth and homey comfort. Tanya served Vitalka as if he were a child, and Gena understood that his brother, apparently, had had a stroke of luck. He also wondered whether his brother understood that he had stolen his lover . . .

Meanwhile Tanya washed the dishes and declared that she would be spending the night at home.

“Besides, you probably have things to talk about without me hanging around . . .”

The brothers indeed had things to talk about. The laboratory their father had directed had been closed because of those mythical financial violations. Goldberg senior had been informed of this in camp. What worried him was both the laboratory’s future and the problems his staff inevitably would have, Valentina in particular. She had already been fired from the laboratory, deprived of her temporary residence pass in the graduate school dormitory, and after dragging her from office to office in the ministry, they ultimately had shipped her back to Novosibirsk, where no one offered her a position of any sort. A letter from Goldberg to his sons had arrived several days earlier. The letter contained a clumsy and long overdue declaration of love for Valentina, plaintive phrases about his love for their deceased mother, and an abashed declaration of his intention of marrying.

Obviously, the announcement contained nothing new for the young men: they had known everything about their father’s affair, but their father had not considered it necessary to inform them of anything until just before he had been shipped off. Most likely, he had had no intention of marrying Valentina, and the idea had occurred to him only in prison. Visitation was allowed only for spouses, and, it seemed, there was an official means for them to legalize their marriage in the camp. Precisely in this regard Goldberg asked his sons to contact his lawyer and find a clever way to tackle the problem. He would say nothing to Valentina of his intentions until he was sure that their marriage was at least theoretically possible.

“I don’t want to cause anyone any needless concern, my dears, but I ask you to take this clarification on yourselves insofar as V—a strong and exceptionally noble person—is nonetheless a woman, and I am completely sure that for her to approach a lawyer with this question would be unbearably humiliating.”

“She’s our age?” Vitalik pointed to the spot in the letter Gena read aloud.

“She’s only two years older than us. Maybe three.”

“Our stepmother.” Vitaly smirked.

Vitalik, who had not yet entirely comprehended the new happiness bestowed on him, would have liked to inform his brother that he himself was ready to get married, but he held his tongue. They had competed for Tanya for too long—almost their entire conscious lifetime—for him to just come out and announce his dazzling victory, which signified simultaneously the unconditional defeat of his other. He even felt pain for his brother, almost as if he were Gena. For the time being the subtle question of why Tanya had preferred him did not concern Vitalik. She had turned out to be an unexpected prize following everything he had undergone. But, ultimately, even if he had been forced to undergo even greater hardships in order to win her, he would have agreed to them willingly.

Gena had the advantage of having been first, but he was not talking. Probably, Vitalka would not be very pleased by the news that his brother had spent six Saturday nights, passionate weekend nights, from Saturday to Sunday, here with Tanya . . .

In keeping with the unspoken agreement between them, they did not talk about Tanya. But they did talk at length about their father and his endless and old-fashioned naïveté. And about his courage. And about his talent. And about his honor. And about how lucky they were to have such a tremendous father.

Then, Gena, as the elder, took action. In the evening he set off for Obninsk, having told his brother that he had an appointment scheduled with his department head the next day.

At eleven o’clock, after shutting the door behind his brother, Vitalik immediately dialed the Kukotskys’ number and even prepared that little phrase from their childhood: “It’s us, the Goldberg brothers . . .” Tanya, however, was not at home. She had not been there at all that evening . . . She was sitting at Nanny Goat’s and matter-of-factly relating the story of the twins, which had occurred completely by chance and entirely to no purpose . . . Vika laughed resoundingly, recollecting Shakespeare, Aristophanes, and Thomas Mann, while Tanya drank Georgian wine and grimaced . . .

“They’re like brothers to me. We grew up together. I love them both.”

Vika raised her round womanly shoulder, pouted her dry lips, cupped the soft rolls of her breasts squeezed in pink knitted fabric in her rigid, iron-stained palms, and bounced them up and down as on a scale.

“So take them both. Only together. That’ll be a high.”

Tanya looked at her seriously as if at a mathematics lesson.

“You know, that’s a thought. It’s not the high itself that interests me especially. But at least no one would feel left out . . . And it would be honest.”

Vika doubled over with laughter.

The next Saturday Gena did not come in from Obninsk. Tanya barely managed to get through to him on the phone. He informed her dryly that he was extremely busy and unable to visit in the foreseeable future. She quickly gathered her things and set off for Obninsk. March was in its final freezing days, and Tanya froze numb in the suburban train. She searched a long time for the dormitory and found it only near evening. Gena she found in bed: he had an awful cold and was covered with two blankets and someone’s old overcoat. The room was desperately cold; water spilled on the windowsill had turned into an icy crust.

“My poor, poor boys,” Tanya mumbled, warming Gena’s hands on her breast. He had a temperature of just under 102 degrees, and it seemed to Tanya as if her hands lay on a frying pan.

“You’re frozen to the core.” Gena laughed, having reached the limits of the possible.

“Yes,” Tanya agreed. “Thoroughly. But you’re very hot.”

Gradually their temperatures balanced out.

Gena went to the communal kitchen to put on a teapot. He had an immersion heater, but the high voltage blew out the fuses. The entire dorm was heated with electric ranges and heaters.

They drank their tea. There was no food, and no place to buy any. The half-empty stores had closed long ago. They warmed each other up again. Toward morning Gena asked Tanya if she wanted to make a choice.

“I’ve already made one,” Tanya answered seriously. “I’ve chosen the Goldberg brothers.”

“There are two of us.”

“I know that.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I don’t see any difference. You or Vitalka, it’s all the same . . .” Tanya waved her arms. “Essentially, I love your father a lot too.”

Gena sat up from his pillow.

“You can leave our father out of it. He’s engaged.”

“I’m not making claims on anyone . . . You’re the one who’s insisting that I make a choice. You also have an out, by the way: you can tell me to leave.” Tanya laughed.

He pressed her head to his bony shoulder and fluffed the short hair on the back of her head.

“Remember how we used to visit you in Zvenigorod? When we’d go down to the river . . . And go boating . . . And play badminton . . . And then you grew up and turned into a bitch.”

“What?” Tanya was surprised. “Why a bitch?”

“Because it makes no difference to you who you screw.”

Tanya stirred, making herself more comfortable.

“It does make a difference. There are some I’d never sleep with, not for anything. But with the Goldberg brothers—anytime.”

“I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll let Vitalka have you.”

“It’s precisely for their nobility that I love the Goldberg brothers so much,” Tanya hemmed and fell asleep . . .

Gena was still saying something and was profoundly amazed to discover that Tanya was sound asleep. Miraculously, his cold had passed, and he felt completely healthy and totally unhappy. Apparently, he needed to talk not with her, but with his brother. Only about what?