Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

When Zoya met Vladimir, he was stunned. Or well, at least pleasantly surprised.

“Oh!” said Vladimir.

That’s just what he said. And wanted to see Zoya very often. But not constantly. And that saddened her.

In her one-room apartment he kept only his toothbrush—a thing that is certainly intimate, but not so much that it would firmly tie a man to the family hearth. Zoya wanted Vladimir’s shirts, underwear, and socks to settle in, how shall we put it, to make themselves at home in the underwear drawer, even lie around on a chair. To be able to grab a sweater or something and soak it, into the Lotos soap with it, and then dry it neatly spread out.

But no, he didn’t leave a trace; he kept everything in his communal flat. Even his razor. Though what did he have to shave, with that beard? He had two beards: one thick and dark, and in the middle of it, another, smaller and reddish, growing in a narrow tuft on his chin. A phenomenon! When he ate or laughed, that second beard jumped. Vladimir wasn’t tall, half a head shorter than Zoya, and looked a bit wild and hairy. And he moved very quickly.

Vladimir was an engineer.

“You’re an engineer?” Zoya asked tenderly and distractedly on their first date, when they sat in a restaurant and she opened her lips only a millimeter to taste the profiteroles in chocolate sauce, pretending for some intellectual reason that it wasn’t very tasty.

“Exac-tic-ally,” he said, staring at her chin.

“Are you at a research institute?…”

“Exactically.”

“…or in industry?”

“Exactically.”

Go figure him out when he was staring at her like that. And had a bit to drink.

An engineer wasn’t bad. Of course, a surgeon would have been better. Zoya worked in a hospital, in the information bureau, and she wore a white coat and thereby belonged a bit to that amazing medical world, white and starched, with syringes and test tubes, rolling carts and autoclaves, and piles of rough, clean black-stamped laundry, and roses and tears and chocolates, and a blue corpse rolled swiftly down endless corridors followed by a hurrying sorrowing little angel clutching to its pigeon chest a long-suffering, released soul, diapered like a doll.

And king of this world is the surgeon, who cannot be regarded without trembling as, dressed with the aid of gentlemen of the chamber in a loose-fitting mantle and green crown with laces, majestically holding his precious hands aloft, he is prepared for his holy kingly mission: to perform the highest judgment, to come down and chop off, to punish and to save, and with his glowing sword give life… What else, if not a king? And Zoya very much wanted to fall into a surgeon’s bloody embrace. But an engineer wasn’t bad.

They spent a very nice time at the restaurant, getting to know each other, and Vladimir, not realizing yet what he could count on from Zoya, was generous. It was afterward that he began to economize, looking through the menu briskly, ordering only an inexpensive main course for himself, and not lingering in restaurants. There was no need for Zoya to sit languorously with a casual expression on her face, slightly mocking, slightly dreamy—her face was supposed to reflect the fleeting nuances of her complex spiritual life, like exquisite sadness or some refined reminiscence; she ate, staring off into space, her elbows delicately resting on the table, her lower lip pouting, sending lovely smoke rings up to the painted vaulted ceiling. She was playing fairy. But Vladimir didn’t play along: he ate with gusto, without a trace of sadness, gulped down his vodka, smoked without languor: quickly, greedily smelling up the table and squashing the butt in the ashtray with his yellowed finger. He brought the check close to his eyes, was horribly astounded, and always found a mistake. And he never ordered caviar: that was for princesses and thieves, he claimed. Zoya was hurt: wasn’t she a princess, albeit unrecognized? And then they stopped going out completely, and stayed home. Or she stayed home alone. It was boring.

In the summer she wanted to go south to the Caucasus. There would be noise and wine and midnight swims with squeals of laughter, and masses of handsome men who would look at Zoya and say, “Oh!” and flash their teeth.

Instead, Vladimir brought a kayak to the apartment and two friends, just like him, in stinky checked shirts, and they crawled around on all fours, putting it together and taking it apart, patching, and sticking sections of the smooth repulsive kayak body in a basin of water, exclaiming: “It leaks! It doesn’t leak!” while Zoya sat on the bed, jealous, annoyed by the crowding, and having to keep lifting her legs so that Vladimir could crawl from spot to spot.

Then she had to follow him and his friends on that horrible expedition to the north, to some lakes, in search of some allegedly glorious islands, and she got chilled and soaked, and Vladimir smelled of dogs. They hurried along, rowing fast, bouncing on the waves, along a grim, northern lake blown up with leaden dark waters, and Zoya sat right on the floor of the hateful kayak, legs stretched straight out, severely shortened without high heels, so pathetic and scrawny in jogging pants, and felt that her nose was red and her hair matted and the hostile spray of the water was melting her mascara, and ahead lay two more weeks of suffering in a damp tent on an uninhabited cliff covered with pine and bilberries, among offensively hearty strangers bawling cheerfully over their dinner made of pea concentrate.

And it was Zoya’s turn to wash the greasy aluminum dishes in the deep icy lake, after which they were still dirty. And her hair was dirty and her head itched under her scarf.

All the engineers had their own women, no one gave Zoya special looks or said “Oh!”, and she felt sexless, a camping buddy, and she hated the laughter around the campfire, and the guitar playing, and the peals of joy over catching a pike. She lay in the tent totally miserable, hating the two-bearded Vladimir, and wanted to get married to him as soon as possible. Then shed have the perfect right as his legal wife not to get ugly in the so-called great outdoors, but stay home in a light and graceful robe (full of ruffles, made in the GDR) on the couch, legs crossed, facing a wall unit with a color TV (let Vladimir buy her one), with pink light coming from the Yugoslav lamp, drinking something light and smoking something good (let the patients’ relatives give her some), and wait for Vladimir to come back from his kayaking trip to greet him a little irritated and suspicious: well, I wonder what you’ve been up to without me? who was with you? did you bring any fish? and later, of course, forgive him for his two-week absence. And during that absence, maybe one of the surgeons would call and flirt, and Zoya, lazily embracing the telephone and with that look on her face, would drawl, “Oh, I don’t know… We’ll see… Do you really think so?” Or she would call a girlfriend, “So what did you say?… And what did he say? And then you?” Ah, the city! Shimmer and evenings and wet asphalt and red neon lights in the puddles under your high heels…

Here the waves thudded against the cliff, and wind howled in the treetops, and the campfire danced its endless dance, and night stared into your back, and the engineers’ dirty-faced ugly women squeaked in their tents. What a drag!

Vladimir adored it, got up early, while the lake was quiet and clear, went down the steep slope, grabbing onto the pines and getting resin on his hands, stood with his legs spread wide on the granite shelf leading into the sunny transparent water, washing, snorting, and groaning; looking back with happy eyes at Zoya, sleepy, without makeup, standing grimly with a pitcher in her hands. “Well? Have you ever heard such silence? Just listen to how quiet it is! And the air? Beautiful!” Oh, how disgusting he was! Marry him, hurry up and marry him.