Tatyana Tolstaya: White Walls: Collected Stories

Oh, there were so many people there, so many owners of quilted cotton and plush jackets, of brown Orenburg scarves. And they all gabbled and bustled and shook blue diagonal remnants before Papa’s face and shoved sturdy black felt boots in his nose. Such treasures there! And Papa: he blew it, missed out, he didn’t bring back anything but the lamp shade. He should have bought up everything: vases and saucers and flowered scarves, stuffed owls and porcelain pigs and rag rugs. We could have used the pussycat banks, and whistles and paper flowers—poppies with inked cotton in their centers—and paper fans, red and green trembling jabots on two sticks: you turn the sticks out and the fringed, impermanent lace shakes, turn them some more and it folds back up and disappears. Marvelous oilcloth paintings flickered: Lermontov on a gray wolf snatching up a swooning beauty; or him again wearing a caftan and aiming from bushes at swans with gold crowns; or doing something on a horse… but Papa dragged me on, farther, farther, past invalids with lollipops, to the lamp shade row.

A man grabbed Papa’s leather sleeve, “Master, sell me your coat!”

Don’t bother us with nonsense, we need a lamp shade, we have to get over there; I turn my head, I glimpse brooms, baskets, painted wooden eggs, a piglet—watch it, that’s it, let’s go back. Where is it? Oh, there. We push our way back through the crowd, Papa has the lamp shade, still dark and silent, but already a member of the family: it’s ours now, one of us, we’ll come to love it. And it waited quietly: where was it being taken? It didn’t know that time would pass and it, once the favorite, would be mocked, cast down, discarded, exiled, and a new favorite would take its place: a fashionable white five-petaled “shorty.” And then, insulted, mutilated, betrayed, it would go through the last mortification: it would serve as a crinoline in a children’s play and then plunge forever into wastebin oblivion. Sic transit gloria mundi.

“Papa, buy me that, please.”

“What is it?”

A merry, bundled-up peasant woman, glad to see a customer, is spinning in the cold, hopping up and down, stamping her felt boots, shaking the chopped-off golden braid as thick as a hawser.

“Buy it!”

“Papa, buy it!”

“Have you lost your mind? A stranger’s hair! Don’t even touch it—it’s got lice.”

Phooey, how horrible! I freeze: and really, there they are, enormous lice, each the size of a sparrow, with attentive eyes and shaggy legs and claws clutch the sheet, climb on the blanket, clap hands, louder and louder—The delirium hums again, the fever screams, the fiery wheels spin: flu!

…A dark urban winter, a cold stream of air from the corridor: one of the adults is hauling in a huge striped sack of firewood to heat up the round brown water heater in the bathroom. Scat, you’re underfoot, get out of the way! Hurrah, we’re going to have baths today! A wooden railing is placed across the tub: heavy chipped basins, pitchers of hot water, the sharp scent of pitch soap, soaked wrinkled skin on the hands, the steamy mirror, stuffiness, the clean, ironed underwear, and whizzz, run down the cold corridor, and plop! into fresh sheets: heaven!

“Nanny, sing a song.”

Nanny Grusha is terribly old. She was born in a village and then was brought up by a kindly countess. Her gray head holds thousands of stories about talking bears, and blue snakes that cure people with tuberculosis by climbing in through the chimney during the night, about Pushkin and Lermontov. And she knows for a fact that if you eat raw dough you’ll fly away. And when she was five—like me—the tsar sent her a secret package to Lenin at Smolny Institute. There was a note in the package: “Surrender!” And Lenin replied: “Never!” And shot off a cannon.

Nanny sings:

The curtain trembles on the window, a threateningly shining moon appears from behind a winter cloud; from the murky Karpovka Canal a black Chechen climbs onto the icy shore, shaggy, baring his teeth….

“Sleep, my darling, sleep tight.”

…Yes, things aren’t going too well with Maryvanna. Should I be sent to a French group? They go out for walks, and get a snack, and play Lotto. Of course, send me. Hurrah! But that evening, the Frenchwoman returns the black sheep to mother.

“Madame, your child is completely unprepared. She stuck her tongue out at the other children, tore up pictures, and threw up her cream of wheat. Come back next year. Good-bye. Au revoir.”

“Bad -bye!” I shout, dragged away by my disappointed mother. “Eat your own crummy cream of wheat! No revoir!”

(“Is that so? Well, just get out of here! Take your lousy kid!”—“Who needs it! Don’t think you’re so hot, madame.”)

“Forgive us, please, she’s really quite difficult.”

“It’s all right, I understand.”

What a burden you are!

…Let’s take colored pencils. If you lick the red, it gives a specially smooth, satiny color. Of course, not for long. Well, enough for Maryvanna’s face. Put a huge wart here. Fine. Now the blue: a balloon and another balloon. And two columns. A black pancake on her head. In her hands, a purse; but I don’t know how to draw one. There. Maryvanna’s done. She’s sitting on a peeling vernal bench, her galoshes spread and planted firmly, eyes shut, singing:

Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you go to your precious Katya?

“Georges always bought halvah for me at Abrikosov’s—remember?”

“Yes, yes, of course—”

“Everything was dainty, delicate—”

“Don’t I know it—”

“And now. Take these: I thought they were intellectuals! But they cut their bread in huge chunks.”

“Yes, yes, yes… and I…”

“I always used the formal ‘you’ with my mother. I showed respect. But these ones, well, all right, I’m a stranger to them, but their parents, at least their parents, but no… nothing… And they grab at the table. Like this! With their hands, their hands.”

God! How long must we put up with each other?

And then they shut the little park to let it dry out. And we simply walk the streets. And one day suddenly a tall thin girl— a white mosquito—throws herself screeching on Maryvanna’s neck, weeping, and caressing her shaking red face!

“My nanny! My dearest nanny!”

And look: that lump, weeping and gasping, also grabs the girl, and they—strangers—right here before my eyes, are both shouting and weeping over their stupid love.

“My dearest nanny!”

Hey, girl, what’s the matter with you? Rub your eyes! It’s Maryvanna. Look, look, she has a wart. It’s our Maryvanna, our laughingstock: stupid, old, fat, silly.

But does love know that?

…Get out of here, girl! Don’t hang around here… with all that goopy stuff…. I push on, angry and tired. I’m much better than that girl. But Maryvanna doesn’t love me like her. The world is unfair. The world is upside down. I don’t understand anything. I want to go home! But Maryvanna has this radiant look, holds me tight by the hand, and puffs along ahead.

“My feet hurt!”

“We’ll make a circle and head back… soon, soon….”

Unfamiliar parts. Twilight. The light air has risen and is suspended over the houses; the dark air came out and is standing in the doorways and arches, in the holes of the street. An hour of depression for adults, of depression and fear for children. I’m all alone in the world, Mama has lost me, we’re going to get lost any second, now. I’m in a panic and I clutch Maryvanna’s cold hand.