White Walls: Collected Stories

OKKERVIL RIVER

When the sun moved into the sign of Scorpio, it grew very windy, dark, and rainy. The wet, streaming city, banging wind against the glass outside the defenseless, uncurtained, bachelor’s window with processed cheeses cooling between the panes on the sill, seemed to be Peter’s evil plan, the revenge of the huge, bug-eyed, big-mouthed, and toothy carpenter-tsar, ship’s axe in his upraised hand, chasing and gaining on his weak and terrified subjects in their nightmares. The rivers, rushing out to the windblown and threatening sea, bucked and with hissing urgency opened the cast-iron hatches and quickly raised their watery backs in museum cellars, licking at the fragile collections that were crumbling into damp sand, at shamans’ masks made of rooster feathers, at crooked foreign swords, at beaded robes, and at the sinewy feet of the angry museum staff brought from their beds in the middle of the night. On days like that, when the rain, darkness, and window-bending wind reflected the white solemn face of loneliness, Simeonov, feeling particularly big-nosed and balding and particularly feeling his years around his face and his cheap socks far below, on the edge of existence, would put on the teakettle, wipe dust with his sleeve from the table, clearing away the books that stuck out their white bookmark tongues, set up the gramophone, selecting the right-sized book to support its listing side, and in blissful anticipation pull out Vera Vasilevna from the torn and yellow-stained jacket—an old and heavy disc, anthracite in color, and not disfigured by smooth concentric circles—one love song on each side.

“No! it’s not you! I love! so passionately!” Vera Vasilevna skipped, creaking and hissing, quickly spinning under the needle; the hiss creak and spin formed a black tunnel that widened into the gramophone horn, and triumphant in her victory over Simeonov, speeding out of the festooned orchid of her voice, divine, low, dark, lacy, and dusty at first and then throbbing with underwater pressure, rising up from the depths, transforming, trembling on the water like flames—pshsts-pshsts-pshsts, pshsts-pshsts-pshsts—filling like a sail, getting louder, breaking hawsers, speeding unrestrained pshsts-pshsts-pshsts a caravel over the nocturnal waters splashing flames—stronger— spreading its wings, gathering speed, smoothly tearing away from the remaining bulk of the flow that had given birth to it, away from the tiny Simeonov left on shore, his balding bare head lifted to the gigantic, glowing, dimming half sky to the voice coming in a triumphant cry—no, it wasn’t he whom Vera Vasilevna loved so passionately, but still, essentially, she loved only him, and it was mutual. Kh-shch-shch-shch.

Simeonov carefully removed the now silent Vera Vasilevna, shaking the record, holding it between straightened, respectful hands; he examined the ancient label: Ah, where are you now, Vera Vasilevna? Where are your white bones now? And turning her over on her back, he placed the needle, squinting at the olive-black shimmer of the bobbing thick disc, and listened once more, longing for the long-faded, pshsts, chrysanthemums in the garden, pshsts, where they had met, and once again, gathering underwater pressure, throwing off dust, laces, and years, Vera Vasilevna creaked and appeared as a languorous naiad—an unathletic, slightly plump turn-of-the-century naiad—O sweet pear, guitar, hourglass, slope-hipped champagne bottle!

And by then the teakettle would be aboil, and Simeonov, fishing some processed cheese or ham scraps from the window-sill, would put the record on again and have a bachelor feast off a newspaper, delighting in the fact that Tamara would not find him today, would not disturb his precious rendezvous with Vera Vasilevna. He was happy alone in his small apartment, alone with Vera Vasilevna. The door was securely locked against Tamara, and the tea was strong and sweet, and the translation of the unneeded book from the rare language was almost complete—he would have money soon, and Simeonov would buy a scarce record from a shark for a high price, one where Vera Vasilevna regrets that spring will come but not for her—a man’s romance, a romance of solitude, and the incorporeal Vera Vasilevna will sing it, merging with Simeonov into a single longing, sobbing voice. O blessed solitude! Solitude eats right out of the frying pan, spears a cold meat patty from a murky half-liter jar, makes tea right in the mug—so what? Peace and freedom! A family rattles the dish cupboard, sets out traps of cups and saucers, catches your soul with knife and fork—gets it under the ribs from both sides—smothers it with a tea caddy, tosses a tablecloth over its head, but the free lone soul slips out through the linen fringe, squeezes like an eel through the napkin ring, and—hop! catch me if you cani—it’s back in the dark magical circle filled with flames, outlined by Vera Vasilevna’s voice, following her skirts and fan from the bright ballroom out onto the summer balcony at night, the spacious semicircle above a sweet-smelling bed of chrysanthemums; well, actually, their white, dry, and bitter aroma is an autumnal one, a harbinger of fall separation, oblivion, but love still lives in my ailing heart— .1 sickly smell, the smell of sadness and decay, where are you now, Vera Vasilevna, perhaps in Paris or Shanghai and which rain—Parisian light blue or Chinese yellow—drizzles over your grave, and whose soil chills your white bones? No, it’s not you I love so passionately. (That’s what you say. Of course it’s me, Vera Vasilevna.)

Trolleys passed Simeonov’s window, once upon a time clanging their bells and swinging the hanging loops that resembled stirrups—Simeonov kept thinking that the horses were hidden up in the ceiling, like portraits of trolley ancestors taken up to the attic; but the bells grew still, and now all he heard was the rattle, clickety-clack, and squeals on the turns, and at last the red-sided cars with wooden benches died, and the new cars were rounded, noiseless, hissing at stops, and you could sit, plopping down on the soft seat that gasped and gave up the ghost beneath you, and ride off into the blue yonder to the last stop, beckoning with its name: Okkervil River. But Simeonov had never gone there. It was the end of the world and there was nothing there for him, but that wasn’t it, really: without seeing or knowing that distant, almost non-Leningrad river, he could imagine it in any way he chose: a murky greenish flow, for instance, with a slow green sun murkily floating in it, silvery willows softly hanging down from the gentle bank, red brick two-story houses with tile roofs, humped wooden bridges—a quiet world in a sleepy stupor; but actually it was probably filled with warehouses, fences, and some stinking factory spitting out mother-of-pearl toxic gases, a dump smoldering smelly smoke, or something else hopeless, provincial, and trite. No, no reason to be disillusioned by going to Okkervil River, it was better to mentally plant long-haired willows on its banks, set up steep-roofed houses, release slow-moving residents, perhaps in German caps, striped stockings, with long porcelain pipes in their mouths… even better to pave the Okkervil’s embankment, fill the river with gray water, sketch in bridges with towers and chains, smooth out the granite parapets with a curved template, line the embankment with tall gray houses with cast iron grates on the windows—with a fish-scale motif on top of the gates and nasturtiums peeking from the balconies—and settle young Vera Vasilevna there and let her walk, pulling on a long glove, along the paving stones, placing her feet close together, stepping daintily with her black snub-toed slippers with apple-round heels, in a small round hat with a veil, through the still drizzle of a St. Petersburg morning; and in that case, make the fog light blue.

Let’s have light blue fog. The fog in place, Vera Vasilevna walks, her round heels clicking, across the entire paved section held in Simeonov’s imagination, here’s the edge of the scenery, the director’s run out of means, he is powerless and weary, he releases the actors, crosses out the balconies with nasturtiums, gives those who like it the grating with fish-scale motif, flicks the granite parapets into the water, stuffs the towered bridges into his pockets—the pockets bulge, the chains droop as if from grandfather’s watch, and only the Okkervil River flows on, narrowing and widening feverishly, unable to select a permanent image for itself.

Simeonov ate processed cheese, translated boring books, sometimes brought women home in the evenings and in the morning, disappointed, saw them out—no! it’s not you!—hid from Tamara, who kept coming over with washed laundry and fried potatoes and flowered curtains for the windows, and who assiduously kept forgetting important things at Simeonov’s—hairpins or a handkerchief she needed urgently by nightfall, and she would travel across the whole city to get them, and Simeonov would put out the light and stand pressed against the foyer wall while she banged on the door, and very often he gave in, and then he had a hot meal for dinner and drank strong tea from a blue and gold cup and had homemade cookies for dessert, and it was too late for Tamara to go back home, of course; the last trolley had gone and it wouldn’t reach the foggy Okkervil River, and Tamara would fluff up the pillows while Vera Vasilevna—turning her back and not listening to Simeonov’s explanations—would walk into the night along the embankment, swaying on her apple-round heels.

The autumn was thickening when he purchased a heavy disc, chipped on one side, from a shark—they had haggled over the damage, the price was very high, and why? because Vera Vasilevna was forgotten, was never played on the radio, never flashed in a newsreel, and now only refined eccentrics, snobs, amateurs, and aesthetes who felt like throwing money on the incorporeal chased after her records, collected wire recordings, transcribed her low, dark voice that glowed like aged wine. The old woman’s still alive, the shark said, she lives somewhere in Leningrad, in poverty, they say, and shabbiness, she didn’t shine too long in her day, either; she lost her diamonds, husband, apartment, son, two lovers, and finally her voice: in that order; and she managed to handle all those losses before she was thirty-five, and she stopped singing back then, though she’s still alive. So that’s how it is, thought Simeonov with heavy heart on the way home over bridges and through gardens, across trolley tracks, thinking that’s how it is…. And locking the door, making tea, he put on his newly acquired treasure and, looking out the window at the heavy colored clouds looming on the sunset side, built, as usual, a section of the granite embankment, erected a bridge: the towers were heavier this time, and the chains were very cast iron, and the wind ruffled and wrinkled, agitated the broad gray smoothness of the Okkervil River, and Vera Vasilevna, tripping more than she ought in her uncomfortable heels invented by Simeonov, wrung her hands and bent her neatly coiffed head toward her sloping little shoulder—the moon glowed so softly, so softly, and my thoughts are full of you—the moon wouldn’t cooperate and slipped out like soap from his hands, sliding across the Okkervil clouds—there were always problems with the Okkervil skies—how restlessly the transparent, tamed shadows of our imagination scurry when the noises and smells of real life penetrate into their cool, foggy world.

Looking at the sunset rivers where the Okkervil River also had its source, already blooming with toxic greenery, already poisoned by the living breath of an old woman, Simeonov listened to the arguing voices of two struggling demons: one demanded he throw the old woman out of his head, lock the door—opening it occasionally for Tamara—and go on as before, loving moderately, longing moderately, in moments of solitude listening to the pure sound of the silver horn singing over the unknown foggy river; the other demon, a wild youth with a mind dimmed by translating bad books, demanded that he walk, run, to find Vera Vasilevna, a half-blind, impoverished, emaciated, hoarse, stick-legged old woman; find her, bend over her almost deaf ear, and shout through the years and misfortunes that she is the one and only, that he had passionately loved her always, that love still lives in his ailing heart, that she, the divine Peri, her voice rising from underwater depths, filling sails, speeding along the flaming waters of the night, surging upward, eclipsing half the sky, had destroyed and uplifted him—Simeonov, her faithful knight—and crushed by her silvery voice, the trolleys, books, processed cheeses, wet sidewalks, bird calls, Tamaras, cups, nameless women, passing years, and the weight of the world all rolled off like tiny pieces of gravel. And the old woman, stunned, would look at him with tear-filled eyes: What? You know me? It can’t be! My God! does anyone still care? I never thought—and bewildered, she wouldn’t know where to seat Simeonov, while tenderly holding her elbow and kissing her no longer white hand, covered with age spots, he would lead her to an armchair, peering into her faded face of old-fashioned bone structure. And looking at the part in her thin white hair with tenderness and pity, he would think: Oh, how we missed each other in this world. What madness that time separated us. (“Ugh, don’t” grimaced his inner demon, but Simeonov wanted to do what was right.)

He obtained Vera Vasilevna’s address in the most mundane and insulting way—for five kopeks at a sidewalk directory kiosk. His heart thumped: would it be Okkervil? of course not.

And not the embankment either. He bought chrysanthemums at the market—tiny yellow ones wrapped in cellophane. Long faded. And he picked up a cake at the bakery. The saleswoman took off the cardboard cover and showed him his selection on her outstretched hand: will it do?—but Simeonov did not notice what he was buying and recoiled, because Tamara was outside the bakery window—or was it his imagination?—going to get him, nice and warm, in his apartment. Only in the trolley did he untie his purchase and look inside. Not bad. Fruit. Decent looking. Lone fruits slept in the corners under a glassy gel: a slice of apple here; in a more expensive corner a chunk of peach; here half a plum frozen in eternal cold; here a mischievous, ladylike corner with three cherries. The sides were dusted with confectionery dandruff. The trolley jolted, the cake slipped, and Simeonov saw a clear thumbprint on the smooth jellied surface—either the careless baker’s or the clumsy saleswoman’s. No problem, the old woman doesn’t see well. I’ll cut it up right away. (“Go back”—his guardian demon sadly shook his head—“run for your life.”) Simeonov retied the box as best he could and began looking at the sunset. The Okkervil rushed noisily in a narrow stream, slapping the granite shores, and the shores crumbled like sand and crept into the water. He stood before Vera Vasilevnas house, shifting the presents from hand to hand. The gates he had to pass were ornamented with a fish-scale motif. Beyond: a horrible courtyard. A cat scurried by. Just as I thought. A great forgotten artist has to live off a courtyard like this. The back entrance, garbage cans, narrow iron banisters, dirt. His heart was pounding. Long faded. In my ailing heart.

He rang. (“Fool,” said his inner demon, spat, and left Simeonov.) The door was flung open by the onslaught of noise, singing, and laughter pouring out of the apartment, and Vera Vasilevna appeared, white and huge, rouged, with thick black brows; appeared at the set table in the illuminated segment above a mound of sharply spiced hors d’oeuvres he could smell even from the doorway, above an enormous chocolate cake crowned with a chocolate bunny, laughing loudly, raucously; appeared and was selected by fate forever. He should have turned and left. Fifteen people at the table laughed, watching her: it was Vera Vasilevna’s birthday, and Vera Vasilevna, gasping with laughter, was telling a joke. She had begun telling it while Simeonov was going up the stairs, she was already cheating on him with those fifteen people while he fumbled and worried at the gate, shifting the defective cake from hand to hand, while he was still in the trolley, while he was locking himself in his apartment and clearing space on his dirty table for her silvery voice, while he was taking the heavy black disc with its moonlight radiance from the yellow jacket the very first time; even before he was born, when there was only wind rustling grass and silence reigned in the world. She was not waiting for him, thin, at the lancet window, peering into the distance into the glassy streams of the Okkervil River; she was laughing in a low voice over a table crowded with dishes, over salads, cucumbers, fish, and bottles, and she drank dashingly, the enchantress, and she turned her heavy body dashingly, too. She had betrayed him. Or had he betrayed Vera Vasilevna? It was too late to figure out now.

“Another one!” someone shouted laughingly, a man, he learned immediately, with the surname Kissov. “You have to pay a fine.” They took the fingerprinted cake and the flowers from Simeonov and squeezed him in at the table, making him drink to the health of Vera Vasilevna, health, as he was convinced, being the last thing she needed. Simeonov sat, smiling automatically, nodding, stabbing a pickled tomato with his fork, watching Vera Vasilevna like everyone else, listening to her loud jokes—his life was crushed, run over into two; it was his own fault, it was too late now; the magical diva had been abducted, she had allowed herself to be abducted, she hadn’t given a damn about the handsome sad balding prince promised her by fate, she didn’t wish to listen for his steps in the noise of the rain and the howling wind outside the autumn window-panes, didn’t wish to sleep enchanted for a hundred years after pricking her finger, she had surrounded herself with mortal, edible people, had made a friend of that horrible Kissov—made even closer, horribly, intimately, by the sound of his name— and Simeonov trampled the tall gray houses by Okkervil River, crushed the bridges with their towers and tossed away the chains, poured garbage into the clear gray water; but the river found itself a new course, and the houses stubbornly rose from the ruins, and carriages pulled by a pair of bays traveled over the bridges.

“Have a smoke?” Kissov asked. “I quit, so I don’t carry any.” He relieved Simeonov of half a pack. “Who are you? An adoring fan? That’s good. Have your own place? With your own bath? Gut. She has to share one here. You’ll bring her to your place to bathe. She likes to take baths. We gather on the first of the month and listen to recordings. What do you have? Have you got ‘Dark Green Emerald’? Too bad. We’ve been looking for it for years. It’s awful—nowhere to be had. The ones you have were hits, lots of them around, that’s not interesting. Look for ‘Emerald.’ Have you any connections for getting smoked sausage? No, it’s bad for her, it’s for… me. You couldn’t find any punier flowers? I brought roses, they were the size of my fist.” Kissov brought his hairy fist close. “You’re not a journalist, are you? It would be great to have a radio show on her, our little Vera keeps hoping for that. What a face. But her voice is still as strong as a deacon’s. Let me write down your address.”

He squashed Simeonov into the chair with his big hand, “Don’t get up, I’ll see myself out,” Kissov got up from the table and left, taking Simeonov’s cake with the dactyloscopic memento.

Strangers instantly inhabited the foggy banks of the Okkervil, hauling their cheap-smelling belongings—pots and mattresses, buckets and marmalade cats; there was no space on the granite embankment, they were singing their own songs, sweeping garbage onto the paving stones laid by Simeonov, giving birth, multiplying, visiting one another; the fat black-browed old woman knocked down the pale shadow with its sloping shoulders, crushed the veiled hat under her foot, and the old-fashioned round heels fell in different directions, and Vera Vasilevna shouted across the table, “Pass the mushrooms!” and Simeonov passed them and she ate some.

He watched her big nose move, and the mustache under it, watched her large black eyes veiled with a film of age travel from face to face when someone turned on a tape recorder and her silvery voice floated out, gathering strength—it’s all right, thought Simeonov. I’ll get home soon, it’s all right. Vera Vasilevna died, she died long, long ago, killed, dismembered, and eaten by this old woman, the bones were sucked clean, I could enjoy the wake but Kissov took away my cake; but it’s all right, here are chrysanthemums for the grave, dry sick dead flowers, very appropriate, I’ve commemorated the dead, now I can get up and leave.

Tamara—the darling!—was hanging around by Simeonov’s door. She picked him up, carried him in, washed him, undressed him, and fed him a hot meal. He promised Tamara he would marry her but toward morning, in his sleep, Vera Vasilevna came, spat in his face, called him names, and went clown the damp embankment into the night, swaying on the black heels he had invented. In the morning Kissov knocked and rang at the door, come to examine the bathroom, to prepare it for the evening. And in the evening he brought Vera Vasilevna to bathe at Simeonov’s, smoked Simeonov’s cigarettes, devoured sandwiches, and said, “Ye-e-es… our little Vera is a force! Think how many men she devoured in her time—my God!” And against his will Simeonov listened to the creaks and splashes of Vera Vasilevna’s heavy body in the cramped tub, how her soft, heavy, full hip pulled away from the side of the damp tub with a slurp, how the water drained with a sucking gurgle, how her bare feet padded on the floor and at last, throwing back the hook, out came a red parboiled Vera Vasilevna in a robe, “Oof. That was good.” Kissov hurried with the tea, and Simeonov, enchanted, smiling, went to rinse off after Vera Vasilevna, to use the flexible shower hose to wash the gray pellets of skin from the tub’s drying walls, to scoop the white hairs from the drain. Kissov wound up the gramophone, and the divine stormy voice, gaining strength, rose in a crescendo from the depths, spread its wings, soared above the world, above the steamy body of little Vera drinking tea from the saucer, above Simeonov bent in his lifelong obedience, above warm, domestic Tamara, above everyone beyond help, above the approaching sunset, the gathering rain, the wind, the nameless rivers flowing backwards, overflowing their banks, raging and flooding the city as only rivers can.