The Story of a Life

74

The Zone of Silence

Every once in a while, I had the day off. I liked to walk to Noevsky Gardens on the other side of the city or wander about the outskirts, usually beyond Presnya and Devichee Field. Those were hungry times. An eighth of a pound of black bread was the daily ration. I took my eighth, two or three apples (my neighbour Lipochka supplied me with them) and a book, and headed out for the whole day until dark.

The outskirts of Moscow differed little from what were then called Russia’s ‘downgraded’ towns, places that had lost their status as administrative centres. A ring of these quiet suburbs circled the enormous, agitated capital, whose hum did not impinge on them. Only rarely did a gust of wind from Moscow carry all the way out here, along with a swirl of dust, the distant notes of ‘The Internationale’ or the crackle of gunfire. Brief gun battles in the streets were rather common then. They erupted suddenly and ended just as suddenly. The suburbs were empty. This was what attracted me to them the most. I don’t know what I liked better – the short break from these stressful days in the city or the search for some peace and quiet, a place where I might relax, calm myself and take a look at what was happening around me from a different angle, and so, perhaps, make some sense of it all.

These visits always filled me with the conviction that before me lay the most varied and diverse kind of life, perhaps even too much so. Why it was I felt this so strongly here, on the outskirts of Moscow, I still don’t know. I would look around at the neglected back alleys overgrown with weedy grass, some faded laundry drying on a line, and think how I would surely come back in a few years to understand how much I had changed while in the meantime this same spot was still just as forgotten and unchanged as before. The peeling church domes would have the same dull sheen and the bone-dry washing would flap in the wind as before, while I, perhaps, would have travelled, written books and, best of all, fallen in love. It was as though I were calling on this back alley to bear witness to my life. I wanted to use this corner of Moscow to mark my passage through time.

But I was wrong, of course. When I returned to Moscow five years later and went back to one of these little spots, I saw a new white building surrounded by young lime trees and a sign in front identifying it as such-and-such district school of music.

The outskirts had their charm – the crooked old wooden houses being held up by heavy beams blackened with age, the long-abandoned little manufactories, their boilers red with rust and lying on their sides among the weeds, the timber sheds smelling of birch bark. There was charm in the little benches, buffed to a bright gloss over the years, standing at gateways where so many sunflower shells had been trodden into the ground that it had turned as hard as asphalt. There was charm in the roads soft with goosegrass, and in the raised barriers at the crossings of disused railway lines. Black locomotives with gaping funnels, most likely from the time of Stephenson, stood on the tracks, their fires extinguished for good. Swallows nested in the drivers’ cabs. There was also charm in the dark, ancient elms, weak from age and almost devoid of leaves even at the height of summer, in the slag heaps overgrown with dandelions, in the nest boxes and in the fences made of broken iron bedsteads and church railings, all entwined with bittersweet morning glory. Geraniums in old tins blazed on the windowsills, looking as exotic as birds of paradise. In one yard I came upon a strange sight – a kennel and inside it a carmine, black-tailed cock (taking the place of the missing dog), chained by the foot, apparently to correct its insolent and aggressive manner.

I loved the fluff from the poplars rolling down the streets in light, silver-grey coils; the mangy, miaowing kittens playing in the backyards; the old women whose wrinkled faces appeared to have been carved out of knotty brown wood; the nasturtiums with their fat round leaves and hooded red flowers; the sparrows drinking from the puddles around the water pumps; the fly-specked oleograph of The Ritual Kiss seen through the open window of a darkened room along with a bored canary in its cage, a potted ficus, a broken and crudely glued-together porcelain setter and a moth-eaten stuffed oriole; or the smoke rising straight up into the white sky from a crooked samovar out in the middle of a yard. As everyone knows, when a crooked samovar sends up straight smoke, a heat wave is coming.

Some child had scrawled the words ‘Heaven’, ‘Hell’, ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Winter Palace’ in charcoal on a few enormous cement pipes that lay abandoned in a vacant plot. Apparently the ‘Winter Palace’ had recently come under attack – it was marked by fresh red scars from flying bricks. Now and then the wind filled the street with the smell of stagnant water and tomato plants. The houses backed onto leafy green kitchen gardens. Instead of scarecrows, pinwheels made of shiny coloured paper twirled on tall sticks placed among the beds. In the distance, above the dust and the dull haze, the cupolas of Moscow and the great dome of Christ the Saviour Cathedral, like the helmet of some medieval knight, shone dark gold. The clouds, lushly whipped egg whites with a slight pinkish tint from the sun, rose high over the churches. Seen from here, Moscow belonged to Asia – a heathen temple of Orthodox saints sculpted out of brown clay or cast in iron, the cylindrical towers of the Kremlin wreathed in the endlessly ascending flights of the pigeons.

The slimy ponds on the edge of the city were particularly nice. Sunken tins gleamed through their water, as green as olive oil. Rotting piles, dangling thin strands of slime, stuck up out of the water at odd angles. It all smelled like a chemist’s shop. Along the shore, willows, their trunks scorched by lightning strikes, bowed over the water and provided shade. I liked to read in that shade, sitting on the warm ground and watching the marsh gases bubbling up from the depths, one round sphere after another. Long-legged insects scurried over the surface. The local boys called them ‘water-racers’. If you tossed a match into the pond, they would all race over and inspect it as a group, and then, as soon as they had convinced themselves it wasn’t edible, scuttle away just as fast. Into every one of these ponds, frothy water was forever gushing from some old rusty pipe. Clouds of fry gathered in the water beneath the mouth of the pipes. The boys made steamships out of strips of wood. Girls hitched up their skirts and waded in to rinse the family laundry. They squealed every time some invisible water-creature darted around their feet. The girls swore that it must be leeches.

At one of these ponds I often met a glum man in torn overalls. He lived off his kitchen garden and the fish he caught in the ponds. He would plant five or six rods in the banks and every so often catch a small carp no bigger than a five-kopeck coin. The old man would sit there hour after hour, nibbling away on his black bread, just like me. I struck up a conversation with him and he took me to see his garden. It seemed to me more beautiful than the most luxurious rose garden. Its green freshness was full of the rich smell of dill and mint.

‘So you see, my friend,’ he said, ‘it just so happens this too is a way of life. There are all sorts of ways to live. You can fight for freedom, you can try to remake humanity or you can grow tomatoes. Everything has its own price, its own dignity and its own glory.’

‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ I asked.

‘That we need to be tolerant and understanding. As I see it, that’s the only path to real freedom. All of us should devote ourselves to the work we like best, and no one should try to stop us. Then nothing can frighten us, and no enemy can stop us.’

I liked to walk through the kitchen gardens and waste ground, where jagged splinters of sunlight from shards of broken glass stabbed my eyes, to the Moscow River, its low bank covered in thick greenery that spilled down from Noevsky Gardens. Slight films of oil formed twirling rainbows on the water’s surface reminiscent of a Gypsy’s shawl. A boy with a boat would row me across the river to the gardens on the other side. The tall lime trees there with their shadows lent the area a certain grandeur. The trees were in bloom. Their strong smell seemed as though it had somehow been transported here from some springtime in a far-off southern clime. I loved to imagine this spring. The picture in my mind made me love the world even more. Having no one to share my feelings with, the only thing for me to do was jot them down on paper, which I did. I soon misplaced these notes, although without any regret. I was ashamed of them. They were completely at odds with those savage days.

Noevsky Gardens had long been famous for its flowers, but it had gradually fallen into decline and run wild, and by the time of the revolution all that remained was a small conservatory. Nonetheless, a few old women and one old male gardener carried on the work there. They soon grew used to my visits and even began to talk to me about their troubles. The gardener complained that flowers were now only requested for funerals and state occasions. Every time he said this, one of the women – she was thin with bright, pale eyes – looked embarrassed for him and liked to assure me that very soon they would most likely be growing flowers to plant in the city squares and to sell to people on the streets.

‘No matter what you say,’ she would always try to convince me, although I had never once contradicted her, ‘people simply can’t live without flowers. Take lovers, for instance. There always have been, are now, and always will be. And can you tell me a better way than flowers to express your love? Nope, our profession will never die out.’

Sometimes the gardener cut some stocks or carnations for me. I was ashamed to carry them through hungry, anxious Moscow, and so I always wrapped them up in paper in such a way that no one could tell what I had in my hand. One day the paper came undone on the tram. I didn’t notice until an elderly woman in a white kerchief asked me: ‘Where did you find such beauties at a time like this?’

‘Careful how you hold them,’ the conductor said. ‘Or someone’ll push up against you and crush them. You know how people are these days.’

‘Who’s pushing?’ a sailor with a heavy cartridge belt asked in a threatening manner. His eyes landed on a knife grinder trying to squeeze through the passengers, dragging his machine behind him. ‘Where d’you think you’re going? Can’t you see – the guy here’s got flowers. Clumsy oaf!’

‘My, aren’t we sensitive!’ jeered the grinder sarcastically. ‘And him in the navy no less!’

‘You leave the navy out of this, or I’ll give you something to cry about!’

‘Oh Lord! All this over some flowers!’ sighed a young mother holding her infant. ‘You know, my husband, such a serious, respectable man, he brought me cherry blossoms in hospital when I had this little one here, he’s my first.’

I became aware of someone behind me breathing heavily, followed by a whisper, so soft that at first I didn’t know where it was coming from. I turned round. A pale little girl of about ten, in a faded pink frock, was staring at me imploringly with eyes as grey and round as pewter saucers. ‘Uncle,’ she said in a hoarse and somehow strange voice, ‘give me a flower! Please, please, give me one.’

I gave her a carnation. The girl took it and then began pushing her way with every bit of strength through the passengers, who were now muttering with envy and indignation, towards the rear platform. In an instant she jumped from the moving tram and disappeared.

‘Crazy fool!’ said the conductor. ‘The girl must be out of her mind! We’d all ask for a flower if we didn’t have a conscience!’

I pulled out one more carnation and gave it to her. She, an older woman, blushed and looked down at the flower, her eyes radiant and welling with tears. Immediately, several hands reached out to me. I gave away the rest of the flowers and then noticed that there, in that battered tram, I was now surrounded by more friendly smiles, more shining eyes, more joy than I had ever seen before or since. It was as though dazzling sunlight had burst into that grubby tram and brought all these weary, anxious people back to life. They wished me happiness, good health, the most beautiful bride in the world and Lord knows what else.

A bony elderly man in a worn black jacket lowered his close-cropped head, opened his canvas satchel and carefully laid his flower inside. I could swear I saw a tear fall from his eye. It was more than I could stand, and so I hopped off before we reached the next stop. As I walked I kept thinking about the memories – whether sad or happy – that the flower must have brought to life for this man and wondered for how long he had carried these feelings inside him until his heart had at last broken and caused him to cry in front of us strangers. Everyone, I am sure, treasures in their soul some memory, as delicate as the scent of the lime trees in Noevsky Gardens, of a glimmer of happiness long buried under the squalor of everyday life.

Wandering the outskirts of Moscow and through Noevsky Gardens, I escaped into a zone of silence that lay so improbably close to the city. These escapes from the overwhelming tumult of Moscow were understandable. Everything was happening so fast that events didn’t even have the time to follow one after another, but piled up in great heaps all at once, each and every day. Yet just a few steps away from this cataclysmic upheaval, normal life went on as before. This too, no doubt, had its own logic.