White Walls: Collected Stories

ON THE GOLDEN PORCH

IN THE beginning was the garden. Childhood was a garden. Without end or limit, without borders and fences, in noises and rustling, golden in the sun, pale green in the shade, a thousand layers thick—from heather to the crowns of the pines: to the south, the well with toads, to the north, white roses and mushrooms, to the west, the mosquitoed raspberry patch, to the east, the huckleberry patch, wasps, the cliff, the lake, the bridges. They say that early in the morning they saw a completely naked man at the lake. Honest. Don’t tell Mother. Do you know who it was?—It can’t be.—Honest, it was. He thought he was alone. We were in the bushes.—What did you see?—Everything.

Now, that was luck. That happens once every hundred years. Because the only available naked man—in the anatomy textbook—isn’t real. Having torn off his skin for the occasion, brazen, meaty, and red, he shows off his clavicular-sternum-nipple muscles (all dirty words!) to the students of the eighth grade. When we’re promoted (in a hundred years) to the eighth grade, he’ll show us all that too.

The old woman, Anna Ilyinichna, feeds her tabby cat, Memeka, with red meat like that. Memeka was born after the war and she has no respect for food. Digging her four paws into the pine tree trunk, high above the ground, Memeka is frozen in immobile despair.

“Memeka, meat, meat!”

The old woman shakes the dish of steaks, lifts it higher for the cat to see better.

“Just look at that meat!”

The cat and the old woman regard each other drearily. “Take it away,” thinks Memeka.

“Meat, Memeka.”

In the suffocating undergrowths of Persian red lilac, the cat mauls sparrows. We found a sparrow like that. Someone had scalped its toy head. A naked fragile skull like a gooseberry. A martyred sparrow face. We made it a cap of lace scraps, made it a white shroud, and buried it in a chocolate box. Life is eternal. Only birds die.

Four carefree dachas stood without fences—go wherever you want. The fifth was a privately owned house. The black log framework spread sideways from beneath the damp overhang of maples and larches and growing brighter, multiplying its windows, thinning out into sun porches, pushing aside nasturtiums, jostling lilacs, avoiding hundred-year-old firs, it ran out laughing onto the southern side and sopped above the smooth strawberry-dahlia slope down-down-down where warm air trembles and the sun breaks up on the open glass lids of magical boxes filled with cucumber babies inside rosettes of orange flowers.

By the house (and what was inside?), having flung open all the windows of the July-pierced veranda, Veronika Vikentievna, a huge white beauty, weighs strawberries: for jam and for sale to neighbors. Luxurious, golden, applelike beauty! White hens cluck at her heavy feet, turkey-cocks stick their indecent faces out of the burdock, a red-and-green rooster cocks his head and looks at us: what do you want, girls? “We’d like some strawberries.” The beautiful merchant’s wife’s fingers in berry blood. Burdock, scales, basket.

Tsaritsa! The greediest woman in the world:

Once she came out of the dark shed with red hands like that, smiling. “I killed a calf…”

Aargh! Let’s get out of here, run, it’s horrible—an icy horror —shed, damp, death….

And Uncle Pasha is the husband of this scary woman. Uncle Pasha is small, meek, henpecked. An old man: he’s fifty. He works as an accountant in Leningrad; he gets up at five in the morning and runs over hill and dale to make the commuter train. Seven kilometers at a run, ninety minutes on the train, ten minutes on the trolley, then put on black cuff protectors and sit down on a hard yellow chair. Oilcloth-covered doors, a smoky half-basement, weak light, safes, overhead costs—that’s Uncle Pasha’s job. And when the cheerful light blue day has rushed past, its noise done, Uncle Pasha climbs out of the basement and runs back: the postwar clatter of trolleys, the smoky rush-hour station, coal smells, fences, beggars, baskets; the wind chases crumpled paper along the emptied platform. Wearing sandals in summer and patched felt boots in winter, Uncle Pasha hurries to his Garden, his Paradise, where evening peace comes from the lake, to the House where the huge, golden-haired Tsaritsa lies waiting on a bed with four glass legs. But we didn’t see the glass legs until later. Veronika Vikentievna had been feuding a long time with Mother.

The thing was that one summer she sold Mother an egg. There was an ironclad condition: the egg had to be boiled and eaten immediately. But lighthearted Mother gave the egg to the dacha’s owner. The crime was revealed. The consequences could have been monstrous: the landlady could have let her hen sit on the egg, and in its chicken ignorance it could have incubated a copy of the unique breed of chicken that ran in Veronika Vikentievna’s yard. It’s a good thing nothing happened. The egg was eaten. But Veronika Vikentievna could not forgive Mother’s treachery. She stopped selling us strawberries and milk, and Uncle Pasha smiled guiltily as he ran past. The neighbors shut themselves in; they reinforced the wire fence on metal posts, sprinkled broken glass in strategic points, stretched barbed wire, and got a scary yellow dog. Of course, that wasn’t enough.

After all, couldn’t Mother still climb over the fence in the dead of night, kill the dog, crawl over the glass, her stomach shredded by barbed wire and bleeding, and with weakening hands steal a runner from the rare variety of strawberries in order to graft it onto her puny ones? After all, couldn’t she still run to the fence with her booty and with her last ounce of strength, groaning and gasping, toss the strawberry runner to Father hiding in the bushes, his round eyeglasses glinting in the moonlight?

From May to September, Veronika Vikentievna, who suffered from insomnia, came out into the garden at night, stood in her long white nightgown holding a pitchfork like Neptune, listening to the nocturnal birds, breathing jasmine. Of late her hearing had grown more acute: Veronika Vikentievna could hear Mother and Father three hundred yards away in our dacha, with the camel’s hair blanket over their heads, plotting in a whisper to get Veronika Vikentievna: they would dig a tunnel to the greenhouse with her early parsley.

The night moved on, and the house loomed black behind her. Somewhere in the dark warmth, deep in the house, lost in the bowels on their connubial bed, little Uncle Pasha lay still as a mouse. High above his head swam the oak ceiling, and even higher swam the garrets, trunks of expensive black coats sleeping in mothballs, even higher the attic with pitchforks, clumps of hay, and old magazines, and even higher the roof, the chimney, the weather vane, the moon—across the garden, through dreams, they swam, swaying, carrying Uncle Pasha into the land of lost youth, the land of hopes come true, and the chilled Veronika Vikentievna, white and heavy, would return, stepping on his small warm feet.

Hey, wake up, Uncle Pasha! Veronika is going to die soon.

You will wander around the empty house, not a thought in your head, and then you will straighten, blossom, look around, remember, push away memories and desire, and bring—to help with the housekeeping—Veronika’s younger sister, Margarita, just as pale, large, and beautiful. And in June she’ll be laughing in the bright window, bending over the rain barrel, passing among the maples on the sunny lake.

Oh, in our declining years….

But we didn’t even notice, we forgot Veronika, we had spent a winter, a whole winter, a winter of mumps and measles, flooding and warts and a Christmas tree blazing with tangerines, and they made a fur coat for me, and a lady in the yard touched it and said: “Mouton.”

In the winter the yardmen glued golden stars onto the black sky, sprinkled ground diamonds into the connecting courtyards of the Petrograd side of town, and, clambering up the frosty air ladders to our windows, prepared morning surprises: with fine brushes they painted the silver tails of firebirds.

And when everyone got sick of winter, they took it out of town in trucks, shoving the skinny snowbanks into underground passages protected by gratings, and smeared perfumed mush with yellow seedlings around the parks. And for several days the city was pink, stone, and noisy.

And from over there, beyond the distant horizon, laughing and rumbling, waving a motley flag, the green summer came running with ants and daisies.

Uncle Pasha got rid of the yellow dog—he put it in a trunk and sprinkled it with mothballs; he let summer renters onto the second floor—a strange, dark woman and her fat granddaughter; and he invited kids into the house and fed them jam.

We hung on the fence and watched the strange grandmother fling open the second-story windows every hour and, illuminated by the harlequin rhomboids of the ancient panes, call out:

“Want milkandcookies?”

“No.”

“Want potty?”

“No.”

We hopped on one leg, healed scrapes with spit, buried treasures, cut worms in half with scissors, watched the old woman wash pink underpants in the lake, and found a photograph under the owner’s buffet: a surprised, big-eared family with the caption, “Don’t forget us. 1908.”

Let’s go to Uncle Pasha’s. You go first. No, you. Careful, watch the sill. I can’t see in the dark. Hold on to me. Will he show us the room. He will, but first we have to have tea.

Ornate spoons, ornate crystal holders. Cherry jam. Silly Margarita laughs in the orange light of the lamp shade. Hurry up and drink! Uncle Pasha knows, he’s waiting, holding open the sacred door to Aladdin’s cave. O room! O children’s dreams! O Uncle Pasha, you are King Solomon! You hold the Horn of Plenty in your mighty arms. A caravan of camels passed with spectral tread through your house and dropped its Baghdad wares in the summer twilight. A waterfall of velvet, ostrich feathers of lace, a shower of porcelain, golden columns of frames, precious tables on bent legs, locked glass cases of mounds where fragile yellow glasses are entwined by black grapes, where Negroes in golden skirts hide in the deep darkness, where something bends, transparent, silvery… Look, a precious clock with foreign numbers and snakelike hands. And this one, with forget-me-nots. Ah, but look, look at that one! There’s a glass room over the face and in it a golden Chevalier seated at a golden table, a golden sandwich in his hand. And next to him, a Lady with a goblet: and when the clock strikes, she strikes the goblet on the table—six, seven, eight…. The lilacs are jealous, they peek through the window, and Uncle Pasha sits down at the piano and plays the Moonlight Sonata. Who are you, Uncle Pasha?

There it is, the bed on glass legs. Semitransparent in the twilight, invisible and powerful, they raise on high the tangle of lace, the Babylon towers of pillows, the moonlit, lilac scent of the divine music. Uncle Pasha’s noble white head is thrown back, a Mona Lisa smile on Margarita’s golden face as she appears silently in the doorway, the lace curtains sway, the lilacs sway, the waves of dahlias sway on the slope right to the horizon, to the evening lake, to the beam of moonlight.

Play, play, Uncle Pasha! Caliph for an hour, enchanted prince, starry youth, who gave you this power over us, to enchant us, who gave you those white winds on your back, who carried your silvery head to the evening skies, crowned you with roses, illuminated you with mountain light, surrounded you with lunar wind?

… Well, enough. Time to go home. It doesn’t seem right to use the ordinary word “Thanks” with Uncle Pasha. Have to be more ornamental: “I am grateful.” “It’s not worthy of gratitude.”

“Did you notice they have only one bed in the house?”

“Where does Margarita sleep, then? In the attic?”

“Maybe. But that’s where the renters are.”

“Well, then she must sleep on the porch, on a bench.”

“What if they sleep in the same bed, head to foot?”

“Stupid. They’re strangers.”

“You’re stupid. What if they’re lovers?”

“But they only have lovers in France.”

She’s right, of course. I forgot.

…Life changed the slides ever faster in the magic lantern. With Mother’s help we penetrated into the mirrored corners of the grownups’ atelier, where the bald tubby tailor took our embarrassing measurements, muttering excuse me’s; we envied girls in nylon stockings, with pierced ears, we drew in our textbooks: glasses on Pushkin, a mustache on Mayakovsky, a large white chest on Chekhov, who was otherwise normally endowed. And we were recognized immediately and welcomed joyfully by the patient and defective nude model from the anatomy course generously offering his numbered innards; but the poor fellow no longer excited anyone. And, looking back once, with unbelieving fingers we felt the smoked glass behind which our garden waved a hankie before going down for the last time. But we didn’t feel the loss yet.

Autumn came into Uncle Pasha’s house and struck him on the face. Autumn, what do you want? Wait; are you kidding?… The leaves fell, the days grew dark, Margarita grew scooped. The white chickens died, the turkey flew off to warmer climes, the yellow dog climbed out of the trunk and, embracing Uncle Pasha, listened to the north wind howl at night. Girls, someone, bring Uncle Pasha some India tea. How you’ve grown. How old you’ve gotten, Uncle Pasha. Your hands are spotted, your knees bent. Why do you wheeze like that? I know, I can guess: in the daytime, vaguely, and at night, clearly, you hear the clang of metal locks. The chain is wearing out.

What are you bustling about for? You want to show me your treasures? Well, all right, I have five minutes for you. It’s so long since I was here! I’m getting old. So that’s it, that’s what enchanted us? All this secondhand rubbish, these chipped painted night tables, these tacky oilcloth paintings, these brocade curtains, the worn plush velvet, the darned lace, the clumsy fakes from the peasant market, the cheap beads? This sang and glittered, burned and beckoned? What mean jokes you play, life! Dust, ashes, rot. Surfacing from the magical bottom of childhood, from the warm, radiant depths, we open our chilled fist in the cold wind—and what have we brought up with us besides sand? But just a quarter century ago Uncle Pasha wound the golden clock with trembling hands. Above the face, in the glass room, the little inhabitants huddle—the Lady and the Chevalier, masters of Time. The Lady strikes the table with her goblet, and the thin ringing sound tries to break through the shell of decades. Eight, nine, ten. No. Excuse me, Uncle Pasha. I have to go.

…Uncle Pasha froze to death on the porch. He could not reach the metal ring of the door and fell face down in the snow. White snow daisies grew between his stiff fingers. The yellow dog gently closed his eyes and left through the snowflakes up the starry ladder to the black heights, carrying away the trembling living flame.

The new owner—Margaritas elderly daughter—poured Uncle Pashas ashes into a metal can and set it on a shelf in the empty chicken house; it was too much trouble to bury him.

Bent in half by the years, her face turned to the ground, Margarita wanders through the chilled, drafty garden, as if seeking lost footsteps on the silent paths.

“You’re cruel! Bury him!”

But her daughter smokes indifferently on the porch. The nights are cold. Let’s turn on the lights early. And the golden Lady of Time, drinking bottoms up from the goblet of life, will strike a final midnight on the table for Uncle Pasha.