White Walls: Collected Stories

DATE WITH A BIRD

“BOYS! Dinner time!”

The boys, up to their elbows in sand, looked up and came back to the real world: their mother was on the wooden porch, waving; this way, come on, come on! From the door came the smells of warmth, light, an evening at home.

Really, it was already dark. The damp sand was cold on their knees. Sand castles, ditches, tunnels—everything had blurred into impenetrability, indistinguishability, formlessness. You couldn’t tell where the path was, where the damp growths of nettles were, where the rain barrel was… But in the west, there was still dim light. And low over the garden, rustling the crowns of the dark wooded hills, rushed a convulsive, sorrowful sigh: that was the day, dying.

Petya quickly felt around for the heavy metal cars—cranes, trucks; Mother was tapping her foot impatiently, holding the doorknob, and little Lenechka had already made a scene, but they swooped him up, dragged him in, washed him, and wiped his struggling face with a sturdy terry towel.

Peace and quiet in the circle of light on the white tablecloth. On saucers, fans of cheese, of sausage, wheels of lemon as if a small yellow bicycle had been broken; ruby lights twinkled in the jam.

Petya was given a large bowl of rice porridge; a melting island of butter floated in the sticky Sargasso Sea. Go under, buttery Atlantis. No one is saved. White palaces with emerald scaly roofs, stepped temples with tall doorways covered with streaming curtains of peacock feathers, enormous golden statues, marble staircases going deep into the sea, sharp silver obelisks with inscriptions in an unknown tongue—everything, everything vanished under water. The transparent green ocean waves were licking the projections of the temples; tanned, crazed people scurried to and fro, children wept…. Looters hauled precious trunks made of aromatic wood and dropped them; a whirlwind of flying clothing spread… Nothing will be of use, nothing will help, no one will be saved, everything will slip, list, into the warm, transparent waves…. The gold eight-story statue of the main god, with a third eye in his forehead, sways, and looks sadly to the east….

“Stop playing with your food!”

Petya shuddered and stirred in the butter. Uncle Borya, Mother’s brother—we don’t like him—looks unhappy; he has a black beard and a cigarette in his white teeth; he smokes, having moved his chair closer to the door, open a crack into the corridor. He keeps bugging, nagging, mocking—what does he want?

“Hurry up kids, straight to bed. Leonid is falling asleep.”

And really, Lenechka’s nose is in his porridge, and he’s dragging his spoon slowly through the viscous mush. But Petya has no intention of going to bed. If Uncle Borya wants to smoke freely, let him go outside. And stop interrogating him.

Petya ate doomed Atlantis and scraped the ocean clean with his spoon, and then stuck his lips into his cup of tea—buttery slicks floated on the surface. Mother took away sleeping Le-nechka, Uncle Borya got more comfortable and smoked openly. The smoke from him was disgusting, heavy. Tamila always smoked something aromatic. Uncle Borya read Petya’s thoughts and started probing.

“You’ve been visiting your dubious friend again?”

Yes, again. Tamila wasn’t dubious, she was an enchanted beauty with a magical name, she lived on a light blue glass mountain with impenetrable walls, so high up you could see the whole world, as far as the four posts with the signs: South, East, North, West. But she was stolen by a red dragon who flew all over the world with her and brought her here, to this colony of summer dachas. And now she lived in the farthest house, in an enormous room with a veranda filled with tubs of climbing Chinese roses and piled with old books, boxes, chests, and candlesticks; smoked thin cigarettes in a long cigarette holder with jangling copper rings, drank something from small shot glasses, locked in her chair, and laughed as if she were crying. And in memory of the dragon, Tamila wore a black shiny robe with wide sleeves and a mean red dragon on the back. And her long tangled hair reached down to the armrests of the chair. When Petya grew up he would marry Tamila and lock Uncle Borya in a high tower. But later—maybe—he would have mercy, and let him out.

Uncle Borya read Petya’s mind again, laughed, and sang— for no one in particular, but insulting anyway.

No, he wouldn’t let him out of the tower.

Mother came back to the table.

“Were you feeding Grandfather?” Uncle Borya sucked his tooth as if nothing were wrong.

Petya’s grandfather was sick in bed in the back room, breathing hard, looking out the low window, depressed.

“He’s not hungry,” Mother said.

“He’s not long for this world,” Uncle Borya said, and sucked his tooth. And then he whistled that sleazy tune again: tarum-pam-pam!

Petya said thank you, made sure the matchbox with his treasure was still in his pocket, and went to bed—to feel sorry for his grandfather and to think about his life. No one was allowed to speak badly of Tamila. No one understood anything.

…Petya was playing ball at the far dacha, which went down to the lake. Jasmine and lilacs had grown so luxuriantly that you couldn’t find the gate. The ball flew over the bushes and disappeared in the garden. Petya climbed over the fence and through the bushes—and found a flower garden with a sundial in the center, a spacious veranda, and on it, Tamila. She was rocking in a black rocker, in the bright-black robe, legs crossed, pouring herself a drink from a black bottle; her eyelids were black and heavy and her mouth was red.

“Hi!” Tamila shouted and laughed as if she were crying. “I was waiting for you.”

The ball lay at her feet, next to her flower-embroidered slippers. She was rocking back and forth, back and forth, and blue smoke rose from her jangling cigarette holder, and there was ash on her robe.

“I was waiting for you,” Tamila repeated. “Can you break the spell on me? No? Oh dear… I thought… Well, come get your ball.”

Petya wanted to stand there and look at her and hear what she would say next.

“What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Panacea” Tamila said, and drank some more. “Medicine for all evil and suffering, earthly and heavenly, for evening doubts, for nocturnal enemies. Do you like lemons?”

Petya thought and said: I do.

“Well, when you eat lemons, save the pits for me, all right? If you collect one hundred thousand pits and make them into a necklace, you can fly even higher than the trees, did you know that? If you want, we can fly together, I’ll show you a place where there’s buried treasure—but I forgot the word to open it up. Maybe we’ll think of it together.”

Petya didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but he wanted to keep looking at her, to watch her speak, watch her rock in that crazy chair, watch the copper rings jangle. She wasn’t teasing him, slyly watching his eyes to check: Well? This is interesting, isn’t it? Do you like it? She simply rocked and jangled, black and long, and consulted with Petya, and he understood: she would be his friend ages unto ages.

He came closer to look at the amazing rings shining on her hand. A snake with a blue eye circled her finger three times; next to it squatted a squashed silver toad. Tamila took off the snake and let him look at it, but she wouldn’t let him see the toad.

“Oh no, oh no; if you take that off, it’s the end of me. I’ll turn into black dust and the wind will scatter me. It protects me. I’m seven thousand years old, didn’t you know?”

It’s true, she’s seven thousand years old, but she should go on living, she shouldn’t take off the ring. She’s seen so much. She saw Atlantis perish—as she flew over the doomed world wearing her lemon-pit necklace. They had wanted to burn her at the stake for witchcraft, they were dragging her when she struggled free and soared up to the clouds: why else have the necklace? But then a dragon kidnapped her, carried her away from her glass mountain, from the glass palace, and the necklace was still there, hanging from her mirror.

“Do you want to marry me?”

Petya blushed and replied: I do.

“That’s settled. Just don’t let me down! We’ll ratify our union with a word of honor and some chocolates.”

And she handed him a whole dish of candies. That’s all she ate. And drank from that black bottle.

“Want to look at the books? They’re piled over there.”

Petya went over to the dusty mound and opened a book at random. It was a color picture: like a page from a book, but he couldn’t read the letters, and on top in the corner there was a big colored letter, all entwined with flat ribbon, grasses, and bells, and above that a creature, half-bird, half-woman.

“What’s that?” Petya asked.

“Who knows. They’re not mine,” Tamila said, rocking, jangling, and exhaling.

“Why is the bird like that?”

“Let me see. Ah, that bird. That’s the Sirin, the bird of death. Watch out for it: it will choke you. Have you heard somebody wailing, cuckooing in the woods at night? That’s this bird. It’s a night bird. There’s also the Finist. It used to fly to me often, but then we had a fight. And there’s another bird, the Alkonost. It gets up in the morning at dawn, all pink and transparent, you can see through it, and it sparkles. It makes its nest in water lilies. It lays one egg, very rare. Do you know why people pick lilies? They’re looking for the egg. Whoever finds it will feel a sense of longing all their life. But they still look for it, they still want it. Why, I have it. Would you like it?”

Tamila rocked once on the black bentwood rocker and went into the house. A beaded cushion fell from the seat. Petya touched it; it was cool. Tamila came back, and in her hand, jingling against the inside of her rings, was the magical egg, pink glass, tightly stuffed with golden sparkles.

“You’re not afraid? Hold it! Well, come visit me.” She laughed and fell into the rocker, moving the sweet, aromatic air.

Petya didn’t know what it was to be depressed for life, and took the egg.

Definitely, he would marry her. He had planned to marry his mother, but now that he had promised Tamila… He would definitely take his mother with him, too; and if it came to that, he could take Lenechka, as well… but Uncle Borya—no way. He loved his mother very, very much, but you’d never hear such strange and marvelous stories as Tamila’s from her. Eat and wash up—that was her whole conversation. And what they bought; onions or fish or something.

And she’d never even heard of the Alkonost bird. Better not tell her. And hed put the egg in a matchbox and not show it to anybody.

Petya lay in bed and thought about how he would live with Tamila in the big room with the Chinese roses. He would sit on the veranda steps and whittle sticks for a sailboat hed call The Flying Dutchman. Tamila would rock in her chair, drink the panacea, and talk. Then they would board The Flying Dutchman, the dragon flag on the mast, Tamila in her black robe on the deck, sunshine and salt spray, and they would set sail in search of Atlantis, lost in the shimmering briny deep.

He used to live a simple life: whittling, digging in the sand, reading adventure books; lying in bed, he would listen to the night trees anxiously moving outside his window, and think that miracles happened on distant islands, in parrot-filled jungles, or in tiny South America, narrowing downward, with its plastic Indians and rubber crocodiles. But the world, it turned out, was imbued with mystery, sadness, and magic, rustling in the branches, swaying in the dark waters. In the evenings, he and his mother walked along the lake: the sun set in the crenellated forest, the air smelled of blueberries and pine resin, and high above the ground red fir cones glimmered gold. The water in the lake looks cold, but when you put your hand in, it’s even hot. A large gray lady in a cream dress walks along the high shore: she walks slowly, using a stick, smiles gently, but her eyes are dark and her gaze empty. Many years ago her little daughter drowned in the lake, and she is waiting for her to come home: it’s bedtime, but the daughter still hasn’t come. The gray lady stops and asks, “What time is it?” When she hears the reply, she shakes her head. “Just think.” And when you come back, she’ll stop and ask again, “What time is it?”

Petya has felt sorry for the lady ever since he learned her secret. But Tamila says little girls don’t drown, they simply cannot drown. Children have gills: when they get underwater they turn into fish, though not right away. The girl is swimming around, a silver fish, and she pokes her head out, wanting to call to her mother. But she has no voice…

And here, not far away, is a boarded-up dacha. No one comes to live there, the porch is rotted through, the shutters nailed, the paths overgrown. Evil had been done in that dacha, and now no one can live there. The owners tried to get tenants, even offered them money to live there; but no, no one will. Some people tried, but they didn’t last three days: the lights went out by themselves, the water wouldn’t come to a boil in the kettle, wet laundry wouldn’t dry, knives dulled on their own, and the children couldn’t shut their eyes at night, sitting up like white columns in their beds.

And on that side—see? You can’t go there, it’s a dark fir forest; twilight, smoothly swept paths, white fields with intoxicating flowers. And that’s where the bird Sirin lives, amid the branches, the bird of death, as big as a wood grouse. Petya’s grandfather is afraid of the bird Sirin, it might sit on his chest and suffocate him. It has six toes on each foot, leathery, cold, and muscular, and a face like a sleeping girl’s. Cu-goo! Cu-goo! the Sirin bird cries in the evenings, fluttering in its fir grove. Don’t let it near Grandfather, shut the windows and doors, light the lamp, let’s read out loud. But Grandfather is afraid, he watches the window anxiously, breathes heavily, plucks at his blanket. Cu-goo! Cu-goo! What do you want from us, bird? Leave Grandfather alone! Grandfather, don’t look at the window like that, what do you see there? Those are just fir branches waving in the dark, it’s just the wind acting up, unable to fall asleep. Grandfather, we’re all here. The lamp is on and the tablecloth is white and I’ve cut out a boat, and Lenechka has drawn a rooster. Grandfather?

“Go on, go on, children.” Mother shoos them from Grandfather’s room, frowning, with tears in her eyes. Black oxygen pillows lie on a chair in the corner—to chase away the Sirin bird. All night it flies over the house, scratching at windows; and toward morning it finds a crack, climbs up, heavy, on the windowsill, on the bed, walks on the blanket, looking for Grandfather. Mother grabs a scary black pillow, shouts, waves it about, chases the Sirin bird… gets rid of it.

Petya tells Tamila about the bird: maybe she knows a spell, a word to ward off the Sirin bird? But Tamila shakes her head sadly: no; she used to, but it’s back on the glass mountain. She would give Grandfather her protective toad ring—but then she’d turn into black powder herself… And she drinks from her black bottle.

She’s so strange! He wanted to think about her, about what she said, to listen to her dreams; he wanted to sit on her veranda steps, steps of the house where everything was allowed: eat bread and jam with unwashed hands, slouch, bite your nails, walk with your shoes on—if you felt like it—right in the flowerbeds; and no one shouted, lectured, called for order, cleanliness, and common sense. You could take a pair of scissors and cut out a picture you liked from any book—Tamila didn’t care, she was capable of tearing out a picture and cutting it herself, except she always did it crooked. You could say whatever came into your head without fear of being laughed at: Tamila shook her head sadly, understanding; and if she did laugh, it was as if she were crying. If you ask, she’ll play cards: Go Fish, anything; but she played badly, mixing up cards and losing.

Everything rational, boring, customary; all that remained on the other side of the fence overgrown with flowering bushes.

Ah, he didn’t want to leave! At home he had to be quiet about Tamila (when I grow up and marry her, then you’ll find out); and about the Sirin; and about the sparkling egg of the Alkonost bird, whose owner will be depressed for life….

Petya remembered the egg, got it out of the matchbox, stuck it under his pillow, and sailed off on The Flying Dutchman over the black nocturnal seas.

In the morning Uncle Borya, with a puffy face, was smoking before breakfast on the porch. His black beard stuck out challengingly and his eyes were narrowed in disdain. Seeing his nephew, he began whistling yesterday’s disgusting tune… and laughed. His teeth—rarely visible because of the beard—were like a wolf’s. His black eyebrows crawled upward.

“Greetings to the young romantic.” He nodded briskly. “Come on, Peter, saddle up your bike and go to the store. Your mother needs bread, and you can get me two packs of Kazbeks. They’ll sell it to you, they will. I know Nina in the store, she’ll give kids under sixteen anything at all.”

Uncle Borya opened his mouth and laughed. Petya took the ruble and walked his sweaty bike out of the shed. On the ruble, written in tiny letters, were incomprehensible words, left over from Atlantis: Bir sum. Bir som. Bir manat. And beneath that, a warning: “Forging state treasury bills is punishable by law.” Boring, adult words. The sober morning had swept away the magical evening birds, the girl-fish had gone down to the bottom of the lake, and the golden three-eyed statues of Atlantis slept under a layer of yellow sand. Uncle Borya had dissipated the fragile secrets with his loud, offensive laughter, had thrown out the fairy-tale rubbish—but not forever, Uncle Borya, just for a while. The sun would start leaning toward the west, the air would turn yellow, the oblique rays would spread, and the mysterious world would awaken, start moving, the mute silvery drowned girl would splash her tail, and the heavy, gray Sirin bird would bustle in the fir forest, and in some unpopulated spot, the morning bird Alkonost perhaps already would have hidden its fiery pink egg in a water lily, so that someone could long for things that did not come to pass… Bir sum, bir som, bir manat.

Fat-nosed Nina gave him the cigarettes without a word, and asked him to say hello to Uncle Borya—a disgusting hello for a disgusting person—and Petya rode back, ringing his bell, bouncing on the knotty roots that resembled Grandfather’s enormous hands. He carefully rode around a dead crow—a wheel had run over the bird, its eye was covered with a white film, the black dragged wings were covered with ashes, and the beak was frozen in a bitter avian smile.

At breakfast Mother looked concerned—Grandfather wouldn’t eat again. Uncle Borya whistled, breaking the shell of his egg with a spoon, and watching the boys—looking for something to pick on. Lenechka spilled the milk and Uncle Borya was glad—an excuse to nag. But Lenechka was totally indifferent to his uncle’s lectures: he was still little and his soul was sealed like a chicken egg; everything just rolled off. If, God forbid, he fell into the water, he wouldn’t drown—he’d turn into a fish, a big-browed striped perch. Lenechka finished his milk and, without listening to the end of the lecture, ran out to the sand box: the sand had dried in the morning sun and his towers must have fallen apart. Petya remembered.

“Mama, did that girl drown a long time ago?”

“What girl?” his mother asked with a start.

“You know. The daughter of that old lady who always asks what time it is?”

“She never had any daughter. What nonsense. She has two grown sons. Who told you that?”

Petya said nothing. Mother looked at Uncle Borya, who laughed with glee.

“Drunken delirium of our shaggy friend! Eh? A girl, eh?”

“What friend?”

“Oh, nothing… Neither fish nor fowl.”

Petya went out on the porch. Uncle Borya wanted to dirty everything. He wanted to grill the silver girl-fish and crunch her up with his wolf teeth. It won’t work, Uncle Borya. The egg of the transparent morning bird Alkonost is glowing under my pillow.

Uncle Borya flung open the window and shouted into the dewy garden: “You should drink less!”

Petya stood by the gate and dug his nail into the ancient gray wood. The day was just beginning.

Grandfather wouldn’t eat in the evening, either. Petya sat on the edge of the crumpled bed and patted his grandfather’s wrinkled hand. His grandfather was looking out the window, his head turned. The wind had risen, the treetops were swaying, and Mama took down the laundry—it was flapping like The Flying Dutchman’s white sails. Glass jangled. The dark garden rose and fell like the ocean. The wind chased the Sirin bird from the branches; flapping its mildewed wings, it flew to the house and sniffed around, moving its triangular face with shut eyes: is there a crack? Mama sent Petya away and made her bed in Grandfather’s room.

There was a storm that night. The trees rioted. Lenechka woke up and cried. Morning was gray, sorrowful, windy. The rain knocked Sirin to the ground, and Grandfather sat up in bed and was fed broth. Petya hovered in the doorway, glad to see his grandfather, and looked out the window—the flowers drooped under the rain, and it smelled of autumn. They lit the stove; wearing hooded jackets, they carried wood from the shed. There was nothing to do outside. Lenechka sat down to draw, Uncle Borya paced, hands behind his back, and whistled.

The day was boring: they waited for lunch and then waited for dinner. Grandfather ate a hard-boiled egg. It rained again at night.

That night Petya wandered around underground passages, staircases, in subway tunnels; he couldn’t find the exit, kept changing trains: the trains traveled on ladders with the doors wide open and they passed through strange rooms filled with furniture; Petya had to get out, get outside, get up to where Lenechka and Grandfather were in danger: they forgot to shut the door, it was wide open, and the Sirin bird was walking up the creaking steps, its eyes shut; Petya’s schoolbag was in the way, but he needed it. How to get out? Where was the exit? How do I get upstairs? “You need a bill.” Of course, a bill to get out. There was the booth. Give me a bill. A treasury bill? Yes, yes, please! “Forging state treasury bills is punishable by law.” There they were, the bills: long, black sheets of paper. Wait, they have holes in them. That’s punishable by law. Give me some more. I don’t want to! The schoolbag opens, and long black bills, holes all over, fall out. Hurry, pick them up, quick, I’m being persecuted, they’ll catch me. They scatter all over the floor, Petya picks them up, stuffing them in any which way; the crowd separates, someone is being led through… He can’t get out of the way, so many bills, oh there it is, the horrible thing: they’re leading it by the arms, huge, howling like a siren, its purple gaping face upraised; it’s neither-fish-nor-fowl, it’s the end!

Petya jumped up with a pounding heart; it wasn’t light yet. Lenechka slept peacefully. He crept barefoot to Grandfather’s room, pushed the door—silence. The night light was on. The black oxygen pillows were in the corner. Grandfather lay with open eyes, hands clutching the blanket. He went over, feeling cold; guessing, he touched Grandfather’s hand and recoiled. Mama!

No, Mama will scream and be scared. Maybe it can still be fixed. Maybe Tamila can help?

Petya rushed to the exit—the door was wide open. He stuck his bare feet into rubber boots, put a hood over his head, and rattled down the steps. The rain had ended, but it still dripped from the trees. The sky was turning gray. He ran on legs that buckled and slipped in the mud. He pushed the veranda door. There was a strong waft of cold, stale smoke. Petya bumped into a small table: a jangle and rolling sound. He bent down, felt around, and froze: the ring with the toad, Tamila’s protection, was on the floor. There was noise in the bedroom. Petya flung open the door. There were two silhouettes in the dim light in the bed: Tamila’s tangled black hair on the pillow, her black robe on the chair; she turned and moaned. Uncle Borya sat up in bed, his beard up, his hair disheveled. Tossing the blanket over Tamila’s leg and covering his own legs, he blustered and shouted, peering into the dark: “Eh? Who is it? What is it? Eh!”

Petya started crying and shouted, trembling in horrible understanding, “Grandfather’s dead! Grandfather’s dead! Grandfather’s dead!”

Uncle Borya threw back the blanket and spat out horrible, snaking, inhuman words; Petya shuddered in sobs, and ran out blindly: boots in the flowerbeds; his soul was boiled like egg white hanging in clumps on the trees rushing toward him; sour sorrow filled his mouth and he reached the lake and fell down under the wet tree oozing rain; screeching, kicking his feet, he chased Uncle Borya’s horrible words, Uncle Borya’s horrible legs, from his mind.

He got used to it, quieted down, lay there. Drops fell on him from above. The dead lake, the dead forest: birds fell from the trees and lay feet up; the dead empty world was filled with gray thick oozing depression. Everything was a lie.

He felt something hard in his hand and unclenched his fist. The squashed silver guard toad popped its eyes at him.

The match box, radiating eternal longing, lay in his pocket.

The Sirin bird had suffocated Grandfather.

No one can escape his fate. It’s all true, child. That’s how it is.

He lay there a bit longer, wiped his face, and headed for the house.