The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

21

TOMA DID NOT LIKE CHILDREN. SHE DID NOT LIKE childhood—her own or anyone else’s—or anything connected with having children. One doesn’t need Freud to understand her profound repulsion for everything in that sphere of life where sexual attraction resides—be it innocent petting in some corner or the wretched panting that accompanies coitus, to which she had been witness since childhood. Her mother’s festering bed—where the mystery of love occurred and where it claimed the life of the janitor whose name had long ago been forgotten by the people in the courtyard—and her undignified death were the stuff of Toma’s nightmares. Whenever Toma fell ill and her temperature climbed, it seemed to her that she lay in the family lair. She would open her eyes, and there would be Elena Georgievna alongside her clean starched bed, crocheting with a large hook something gray or beige; seeing that Toma had woken, she would give her warm tea with lemon and wipe her wet brow . . . Pavel Alekseevich would drop in in the evening with some surprise: once he brought her a transparent glass rabbit the size of a real mouse. Later she lost the rabbit at the dacha, or one of their dacha neighbors had stolen it, and there was much grief. Another time Pavel Alekseevich brought her a little box with scissors, tweezers, and a sharp thing she didn’t know what to do with. He brought Toma the present and kissed Elena Georgievna on the head as she sat alongside the bed. To Toma it was absolutely apparent that although they were husband and wife, there could be none of the wretched muck from which her poor momma had died between these two clean, fine-smelling, and beautifully dressed people. They even slept in different rooms.

A lot of what Toma saw in the Kukotsky household she interpreted in the most fantastic ways, but in this case she was not mistaken: no such muck took place between husband and wife, in fact not since the moment she had entered their home . . .

As for the manicure set, it has survived to this day and not lost its significance: when the girls were ill, he brought little presents every evening, and these daily treats reconciled them with their illness. When Tanya was ill, Pavel Alekseevich brought two presents, for both girls, the sick one and the healthy one. But if Toma was ill, he brought nothing for Tanya . . .

For that reason, Toma was certain that Pavel Alekseevich loved her more than Tanya. Her understanding of fairness, whereby everything was distributed equally by weight, size, and quantity, had remained with her since infancy, although occasionally it was shaken by suspicion that things were not that simple. But Toma had always preferred simple things to the complex . . .

In the Kukotsky household there was no talk of fairness. And nothing was divided equally. At dinner everyone was apportioned two meat patties. But Tanya frequently refused the second. Vasilisa did not eat meat at all. For a long while Toma thought that Vasilisa was not given meat “out of fairness,” that is, because she was a servant. Later it turned out that Vasilisa herself did not want the meat. But, after having spent several months in their household, Toma stalked Vasilisa and uncovered that she had her own special food that no one else in the house ate: in her pantry she kept dried white bread cut into tiny pieces, which she ate in the morning, in secret from everyone. Which meant that there was a certain kind of fairness here. Toma once crept into the pantry and found the bread wrapped in a rag and tried a piece: it was absolutely tasteless. There was absolutely nothing special about it at all.

Living with her mother and brothers, Toma had constantly been involved in divvying things up: her little brothers always grabbed the larger and better pieces, and they fought constantly over food. Her mother also argued with everyone on various counts, and the arguments—even fistfights—were always over fairness. With the Kukotskys everything went contrary to fairness, which amazed her, especially at the outset. In the summer at the dacha Pavel Alekseevich would drop the first strawberry from his own plate onto Elena Georgievna’s, and she, laughing, poured her berries onto the plate in front of Vasilia, who would get upset.

“I’m not going to eat your slush! Give it to the children . . .”

Just as with meat patties, Tanya did not care for strawberries, and the berries would end their circular journey around the table on Toma’s plate . . .

Now, though, after Zhenya had appeared in the household, Toma finally came to understand the joy of giving. It was amusing that Toma experienced this for the first time at the same dacha with the same first strawberries grown in their “own” garden. There were only eleven of these first, red but not quite fully ripe, berries from Vasilisa’s planting, which Vasilisa placed proudly on the table one Sunday morning, saying: “The first are yours . . .”

Pavel Alekseevich gave everyone two berries each, placing the very last one on Zhenya’s plate. Once again, just as when Toma had been a child, the berries went from plate to plate. Pavel Alekseevich placed one in his mouth and another in Zhenya’s. Zhenya popped her berries into her mouth, comically screwing up her face but smacking her lips in delight . . .

Vasilisa muttered something that sounded as if strawberries were also included in her fast. And here, watching Zhenya’s gastronomical pleasure written on her berry-juice-smattered face, Toma understood how she would get more enjoyment watching the child eat them than eating them herself . . .

And so it happened, unnoticed by all, that Toma came to love Zhenya, her niece, as she called her . . .

The little girl was living at her grandfather’s house for a second year. Pavel Alekseevich thought that the child should be with them until Tanya got her life in order. And so it came to be that last year’s dacha season had stretched over a whole year. Tanya was not able to move to Moscow. She had come to visit rather frequently for several days at a time, but only now, toward the beginning of July, had things begun to settle down. Just before retiring, Pavel Alekseevich had managed to obtain rights to a one-room apartment in a new academic cooperative building—for Toma. The former girls’ room returned to Tanya’s ownership, although, truth be told, the ownership was not hers alone, but her family’s, together with Sergei and Zhenya.

The separate apartment Pavel Alekseevich had managed to arrange and pay for with his own money was a fairy-tale fantasy come true for Toma. The building was not entirely completed, but she had already made several trips to Leninsky Avenue, the far end, and walked around the already finished construction and even stood alongside the entrance to her future front door. She had been given an estate, her own island, as a result of which she reevaluated in her head everyone around her in relation to herself: her own worth, it seemed to her, had grown immeasurably . . . Among her coworkers, especially those her age, she knew no one who possessed a similar treasure. What was more, she still could not understand why the apartment was being built for her, and not for Tanya, their own daughter, who, in addition to everything else, had a family of sorts of her own.

Certainly, the same idea had occurred to Pavel Alekseevich before it had to Toma. Moreover, he had discussed it with his daughter during one of her visits to Moscow. He had begun the conversation precisely by proposing to Tanya that they build a two-room apartment for her family. But Tanya, without a minute’s hesitation, had refused: her sole motivation for returning to Moscow was “our old girls, who are falling further into decline, and I’m moving here in order to take care of them . . .” Pavel Alekseevich was hurt by Tanya’s condescending use of the word “old girls” in reference to both Elena and Vasilisa . . .

Breaking with Piter was difficult: Sergei had had a breakthrough, and he was mastering one instrument after the next, playing unusual chromatic double-voice pieces on a handmade double recorder, then trying his hand at the basset horn, then, finally—following in the footsteps of Roland Kirk—he got caught up in the completely exotic musical practice of playing two saxophones at once. And he succeeded at all of it. His musical path spiraled upward, and with increasing frequency Sergei extracted his own compositions from this musical rumble. After long drawn-out doubts, Garik began playing one of his compositions—“Black Stones.”

Tanya worked a lot: her black stones were becoming stylish, in part with the help of Poluektova, who had come from Perm for the holidays. True, during her visits Sergei, Tanya, and Zhenya would have to move to the workshop, which Poluektova herself did not insist on: jealousy was not in her repertoire. She even liked Tanya, and her own life in Perm was on a steady rise. Her classes were considered the best, she had moved from stage repertoire teacher to choreographer, and her love affair with the most talented of the school’s graduates lent her energy, spirit, and a certain dose of good nature that was entirely out of character. Tanya presented Poluektova with a pair of her creations, and the latter modelled them very successfully at the Mariinsky Theater, where she had danced before retiring, and the entire corps de ballet lined up for Tanya’s jewelry. Tanya barely managed to keep up with the orders. Tanya herself had become an item as well: she and Sergei were constantly invited to all the hip events, from theatrical premieres to closed at-home concerts. Tanya now wore short black dresses, and her dyed brown hair, which grew with amazing speed, she wore long: after two years it covered her sharp shoulder blades. Tripping constantly along music’s shore as though along the sea’s edge, her body was poised and transmitted a kind of hidden movement even when she stood completely still. But the main event was taking place in the dark and where no one could see: Tanya was pregnant, thrilled immeasurably, and so far had said nothing about this to anyone, except Sergei—not even to Pavel Alekseevich. It was decided that her last two months free of household responsibilities she would spend together with Sergei touring Crimea and the Caucasus Mountains; after the tour ended they would travel to an international jazz festival in the Baltic region, and then, after quickly packing their rather impoverished stuff and drawing the line at the end of their Petersburg life, they would move to Moscow—to give birth to a son, raise Zhenya, and take care of the old folks. That the difficulties in all this promised to be enormous only fueled Tanya’s resolve: she was so full of happiness and strength, so fearless and carefree, that she even rushed time a bit. Which in no degree got in the way of her finding pleasure from day to day . . .

The tour began—which was especially delightful—in Odessa at that same International Sailors’ Club where Tanya had first seen Sergei. Here they celebrated the theoretical third anniversary of their union. There were no performances in Kurortnoe this year, but they hired a car for a day and went out there. Nothing had changed, and everything stood in its old place: the dusty whitewashed huts and the tomato plantations. They descended the precarious staircase to the colorless sea. Over those three years it had washed away even more shore, and now a dangerous hole gaped between the lower part of the staircase and the slope of the cliff.

“Not for the tipsy,” Tanya noted. Sergei offered his hand. She took his hand, even though she felt completely sure of her footing.

They went for a swim and decided to take a look at the dunes. The driver waited for them up above. A native Odessan, he was morose and gloomy and of few words, a walking refutation of common stereotypes about Odessans. He dropped them off at the sandbar, at the same place where three years ago Garik’s car had got stuck. Tanya and Sergei headed for the sandbar. It was a weekday, there were practically no people, no one was sunbathing near their memorial ruins, and only a few empty bottles lay scattered, half-covered with sand. It wasn’t as hot, as burning sticky hot as it had been then. A breeze blew in from the sea. It fluttered Tanya’s red sundress—she had put it on especially so that everything would be as it had been. They skinny-dipped. They lay down on the sand in the half-shade of the half-ruins . . . Tanya embraced Sergei, and he immediately responded. Now everything was different. They had matured and grown careful. They feared disturbing the infant that floated inside and had already begun his first stretches, thrashing from inside with a foot or a fist, and their lovemaking—pianissimo and legato—was of an entirely different variety from their first stormy and unconscious time. But both ways were good . . .

Placing Sergei’s hands on her stomach, she whispered in his ear.

“Our little boy is going to be big, not like Zhenka, the potbellied squirt . . .”

Then Sergei took a bottle of wine, two tomatoes, some eggs, and greens from his bag. The green onion was yellowed and mature. The bread crumbled. Tanya chewed a limp stalk, salted a crust of bread, and bit off a piece. The food would not go down. She drank two gulps of wine, and, after collecting the remains, they headed back to the car. As they walked, Tanya’s nose began to bleed. Sergei dampened the red sundress in the estuary’s water, and applied a rather warm compress. The blood stopped quickly. They had to hurry, because there was a performance in the evening.

They arrived an hour before it began. Tanya was nauseated, and her head and leg muscles ached. She wanted to put on her evening dress—the green one with the thin straps, a gay little number that stretched over her stomach—but at the last minute decided to stay in the room. She lay down and fell asleep immediately. But she quickly woke up from the pain. She placed her hands on her belly and asked: “So, how are you?”

The little boy did not answer. Apparently, everything was okay with him. She should probably take an aspirin. But, first of all, there was none, and second, Tanya did not really want to take any pills. Just before Sergei returned, the nosebleed began again.

“Maybe we should call a doctor?” Sergei began to worry.

Tanya puckered her lips: she did not want medical care. During her last pregnancy she had not even bothered to register at a clinic, had not had any of the prescribed tests done, and was even a bit proud to have avoided all the ado women today make over so natural and healthy an affair as having a baby . . . A bit later Garik and Tolya—already slightly drunk—dropped by with two bottles: an open bottle of wine and a sealed bottle of vodka. Tolya did not consider wine alcohol, while Garik had an acute sense of style: he thought only a hopeless alcoholic would drink vodka in the South in the summer. Winter was a different matter . . .

“I don’t like the way you look, old girl,” Garik announced from the threshold. “You’re not jumping or hopping, just bitter-bitter sobbing . . . Think what you will, but I’m calling an ambulance . . .”

He headed resolutely for the phone. The phone was dead.

Tanya stopped Garik.

“Let’s wait until morning . . . I’d like to drink some tea with lemon. And, to hell with it, bring me some aspirin . . .”

They brought Tanya her tea, and after taking the aspirin she felt better. She fell asleep. She woke up at four o’clock in the morning, vomiting. This time Sergei did not hesitate, went down to the reception desk, and called an ambulance.

An elderly Jewess quickly examined Tanya and said that she was taking her to the hospital right away. She spoke in vexation, even threateningly, and Tanya took a deep dislike to her, but her muscles were killing her, her head was pounding, and pain was spreading along the wall of her belly.

Tanya tried to object, but the old doctor would not listen to her, as if she were a senseless child, and turned instead to Sergei.

“Her liver has descended by almost more than two inches. I refuse to accept that kind of responsibility. What did you bring me out here for? To talk? If you want to get medical help, you have to hospitalize her immediately. Explain to your wife that she could lose the child.”

For some reason she did not take a liking to Tanya either and did not even look in her direction.

Tanya was taken away, and after that all hell seemed to break loose. A pipe broke in the club, closing it for technical reasons. Their performance was canceled. They spent the whole day with only their worries, and Tolya Aleksandrov got drunk as a result, which in and of itself was nothing terrible, but he got into a fight in some beer hall and was socked hard right in the eye. Sergei shagged back and forth to the hospital three times a day: they told him nothing, and for two days straight he was unable to track down the attending physician, who had either just left or not yet arrived. Then the weekend came, and there was no physician in attendance whatsoever, only a doctor on call, whom Sergei also was unable to track down: he was either eating dinner or had been summoned to care for a critical patient. All the staff knew perfectly well that he was on a drinking binge and not coming to work.

No one was allowed in the pathology section: it was quarantined. Everything stopped and was put on hold. Even the weather deteriorated, and it started to rain.

Tanya was getting sicker and sicker, and the moment had come when she herself began to get scared. She discovered a black-and-blue mark on her left forearm, and a similar bruise on her side. The back of her head continued to throb. Her belly hurt with an unusual burning metallic pain. Nurses came and took her temperature, felt her belly, and measured her blood pressure . . . Her temperature was normal.

Tanya felt worse and worse; on the third day she decided to summon her father.

She got paper and a pencil from her neighbor and wrote a note to Sergei asking him to call her father in Moscow and tell him to come. Notes were passed by tossing them out the window. On Saturday morning Sergei picked up Tanya’s scribbled missive: it was laconic and desperate. He immediately headed for the post office and sent Pavel Alekseevich a telegram.

Toward evening Sergei came to Tanya’s window with his saxophone. Usually visitors called up to their Veras and Galyas from the dusty lawn below, and the women would hang their milk-swollen breasts and victorious smiles out the window. Among the dozen or so local, fresh-baked poppas—sailors, criminals, and merchants—Sergei was the only one who was thin, long-haired, and sober. Moreover, what he experienced was not the collective joy of childbirth, but his own personal alarm and terror, which had settled at the bottom of his stomach, apparently, because his ulcer, healed over long ago, did not exactly hurt, but was sending ominous signals . . .

Tanya was on the third floor, but Sergei decided not to shout from the lawn. He took his instrument out of its case, put the reed to his lips, and made it speak slowly.

Tan-ya . . .

Tanya heard, but was not able to come to the window right away. When she lifted herself from her pillow, her head started to spin, and a wave of nausea came over her. But her stomach had been emptied long ago, and enduring the sharp and pointless spasms, she dragged herself to the window. Her legs ached desperately with each step, while her belly seemed to be filled with lead . . . She popped her head out the window only after Sergei had extracted his mournful “Tan-ya” for the third time from the thin metal throat of his instrument.

At first he did not recognize her: she had piled her hair in a bun on the top of her head, just as her mother had worn hers all her life. And the hospital gown–prison shirt made her seem strange and bulky . . . She waved her hand: the gesture was Tanya’s own, imitable by no one. Looking at him from above, Tanya recognized her favorite moment: when he took his instrument in hand, and this cute but nondescript young man metamorphosed into a musician in the same way a horse turns a person into a rider, and weaponry turns a man into a warrior: when the sum of human and inhuman exceeds the value of each separately.

Sergei held his saxophone in his hands. His right hand was below, fingers on the keys, his left hand higher up, on the octave pin near the crook of the metallic body, his chin pointed upward, and his lower lip protruded—right inside was that tender callus she could touch with her tongue . . . He held the saxophone—a generally silly creature, the fantasy of an instrument-maker, a hybrid of wood and metal with a piece of plastic thrown in, that in terms of shape was far from perfect, its keys protruding not very elegantly from the body, and the bell, likely, too sharply turned outward . . . Among the wind instruments there were no few beauties: the flute with its ancient simplicity, and all its ingenuous relatives—from the syrinx to the tsevnitsa; the maple bassoon with its vestigial bell and beaklike head; the ascetic trombone that looked like something out of an apothecary; the pedantically curled brass cornet with its silly valve mechanisms; and the snail-twirled stately French horn . . . And what about the oboe’s bell? Or the funnel of the trumpet, curled back to the depths of its soul? The saxophone, of course, was not the most perfect, but the overtones of its voice could transmit human gradations of tenderness, triumph, or sorrow. And, in addition to everything else, they—Sergei and his saxophone—mutually resonated each other . . . Together the two of them were capable of uttering that which Sergei never could on his own. He placed the reed between his tensed lips, pressed his teeth up against the fold inside his lower lip, worn with years of playing, and a velvety deep-blue A-note said: “Let’s begin!”

And they, Sergei and his “Selmer,” began—lightly, easily, and without having to think about what they wanted to tell Tanya that was so important. It was Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Tanya immediately recognized the breathless music that progressed through major thirds—C–E–G♯—the key changing three times over the course of the theme, but Sergei did not play to the end, swerving off into his own solo, then progressing by way of rising arpeggios to the top, looking back, and ascending once again to the point where the saxophone’s possibilities ended, and then carefully descending down the blues scale, and Tanya began to recognize something vaguely familiar, something she had heard many times . . . perhaps Haden’s “Always Say Good-bye” . . . or something like it . . . or Seryozha’s . . .

She remembered how she had written him a letter full of grandiloquent nonsense from the maternity hospital three years ago, in Piter, when she had given birth to Zhenka . . . About how wonderfully they—Sergei and his instrument—got along without any words, and about how now, if this entire episode ended well, she would never again talk nonsense, because talking nonsense was shameful when there was music, which never spoke nonsense . . . Now the music spoke distinctly, gravely, and not at all glibly . . . , as it might seem to someone not fluent in its clear and transparent language: say good-bye, say good-bye . . . always . . . forever say good-bye . . . The small sounds—sharp, jagged, metallic—were just as unrelenting as they were marvelous . . .

Tanya held her pain-wracked belly with both hands. Would he really die, their little boy, with his palms folded under his chin, his soft ears, his mouth still sealed shut, blond, resembling Seryozha, with an upper lip that hung slightly over the lower . . . Poor Pavlik . . . Poor unborn Pavlik . . .

Sergei did not see Tanya alive again. Nor did Pavel Alekseevich. He arrived from the dacha and found two telegrams stuffed in the door: one from Sergei with a request that he come; the second, written two days later, with the notarized signature of the chief physician, informing him of the death of Tatiana Pavlovna Kukotskaya.

A day later Pavel Alekseevich stood alongside a table covered with spotted tin, and it was the bitterest moment of his life. The delicate flame of life, the greenish tinge of a working heart, the clots of energy produced by the various organs, were already all shut down. She was an olive-plastic color, his suntanned little girl, with hematomas on her forearms and calves, with autopsy sutures of the like to indict these so-called doctors of a grave crime against nature. He had already seen the forensic report. They also showed him her backdated case history. The entire hospital—from the chief physician down to the last nurse—froze in horror, awaiting retribution. With a single glance Doctor Kukotsky had determined that over the first two days following admission to the hospital no diagnosis had been made and no treatment administered, that the required tests had been done too late, that pregnancy had only made the situation worse . . . and that he would have been able to save his little girl, had he arrived from the dacha not on Tuesday, but on Friday . . .

Tanya’s resemblance to her mother was incredible and tormenting. A quarter century ago he had stood exactly the same way over young Elena, close to death, and had seen her gathered chestnut hair, her thin nostrils, and her brushy brows from precisely the same angle.

“Never. Elena will never know about this,” he thought, and was stunned by an instantaneous epiphany: might Elena have departed for her empty, enigmatic, mad world so as never to learn about what her prophetic heart had glimpsed long ago . . . ?

He proceeded to the chief physician’s office and asked him to gather the section heads. The chief attempted to object, but Pavel Alekseevich cast him such a general’s look, that he rushed to call his secretary to invite them all immediately to his office. Five minutes later six doctors sat in the office. The forensic report and the patient’s history lay before Pavel Alekseevich.

“This case demands a special investigation,” uttered Pavel Alekseevich. The doctors exchanged glances. “The quantity of blunders, errors, and medical crimes exceeds all bounds. A patient with a communicable infection was placed in the pathology ward. No biochemical blood tests or bacteriological analyses were performed. No diagnosis was made. I am assuming that what we have here is Weil’s disease, Morbus Weili. If it is leptospirosis, then immediate measures need to be taken.”

The forensic pathologist—a deformed little Asian with dyed whiskers, was terribly nervous.

“Excuse me, colleague, but we have no grounds for such conclusions. You saw the report, and we gave you an opportunity to conduct an examination of the . . . corpse? body?” Whiskers hesitated for a second, “Patient? What grounds do you have?”

“Focal degeneration with hemorrhaging in the muscles, petechiae. The patient’s records correspond to nothing. There was toxicosis. Intravenous infusions, indicated here, were not administered. I examined the veins . . . I am left to conclude that no treatment whatsoever was given. But that’s not the issue right now. Your maternity hospital is infected with hepatitis.”

Pavel Alekseevich did everything he would have done in any other situation: he called the city health office, summoned the head of the health inspection service, and the chief epidemiologist. A fever ran through the city’s medical administration from top to bottom, to the extent that janitors started scrubbing down toilets twice a day, midlevel medical personnel stopped getting drunk on night duty, and the kitchen kept an eye out to make sure stolen butter and meat were not taken from the premises.

Pavel Alekseevich spent three days at the hospital. On the fourth he boarded a train together with Sergei—who had fallen into spiritual lockjaw and total stupefaction. In the train’s baggage car there stood a zinc coffin with a small rectangular window through which multiple folds of white gauze were visible.

With Garik’s last money—Pavel Alekseevich had spent everything he had, Sergei also—they bought four bottles of vodka. They drank the warm vodka a long time, slowly, a little bit at a time, snacking on pieces of crumbled cookies straight out of the package—there wasn’t anything else—in silence . . . Then Sergei lay down on the lower berth, hugged the case with his instrument hidden away inside, and slept until they reached Moscow. Pavel Alekseevich never closed his eyes once the entire thirty-six hours: he sat opposite the sleeping young man and looked at his tormented face. He was fair-skinned, his eyelids and nose tipped with redness. His thin white stubble broke through the tender skin of his cheeks, forming tiny pustules . . . The corners of his crusted lips twitched. In his sleep he stroked the case and mumbled something. Pavel Alekseevich did not catch the words. He was thinking about how their life had changed when two men had appeared in their home: this dear young man and the little one who was not to be . . . He also thought about what had happened to his daughter: from the moment when a restless spiral had landed in her stomach together with the local rotten water, been absorbed by her mucous membranes, dispersed by the bloodstream throughout her entire body, nested in her highly oxygenated muscles, and poisoned her blood to such an extent that her poor liver, already overtaxed by her pregnancy, had been unable to filter it . . . Pavel Alekseevich needed no auxiliary clairvoyance now: the accursed picture, crude and clear as a picture from a child’s primer, stood before his eyes . . .

Everything had been arranged. Vitalik Goldberg met them at the Kursk train station. At the German cemetery the family burial plot was already open—two steps away from Doctor Haass. There lay Pavel Alekseevich’s grandfather and great-grandfather. And now, interrupting the natural order, Tanya would be placed to rest there. No one besides Tanya’s father, husband, and lover was present at the burial.

Sergei wanted to leave immediately, but Pavel Alekseevich asked him to spend the night. Sergei did. The apartment was empty, summery, dusty. Pavel Alekseevich gave him some sort of pill. They drank vodka. Then Sergei lay down to sleep on Toma’s couch. He, Tanya, Zhenya, and the little boy were supposed to have moved into this room several months later.