Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

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.