Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

“Do what?” Galya was bewildered.

“Ears. Don’t you know? My explorer froze off his ears. He’s a Siberian, expansive and generous, they were having an International Women’s Day party with some Norwegians, and one Norwegian liked his fur cap with ear flaps, and so he traded with him. For a cap. It was eighty below outside and seventy degrees indoors. That’s a hundred-fifty-degree difference, can you imagine? Someone called his name from the street: ‘Petya!’ he stuck out his head, and his ears—wham!—just fell off. Of course, there was general panic, they hauled him over the coals, stuck his ears in a box, and flew him immediately to Kurgan, to Dr. Ilizarov. So here’s what… I’m leaving.”

Galya sought words in vain. Something painful.

“Really,” sighed Filin. “It’s autumn. It’s sad. Everyone’s abandoned me. Alisa abandoned me…. Matvei Matveich hasn’t shown his nose…. Maybe he’s dead? You’re the only one, Galochka…. You’re the only one who could, if you wanted to. But now I’ll be closer to you. I’ll be closer now. Have some perch. Einmal in der Woche, Fisch, which means, fish once a week. Who said that? Well, which famous person said that?”

“Goethe?” Galya muttered, softening against her will.

“Close. Close, but not quite.” Filin was animated and younger. “We’re forgetting our history of literature, tsk-tsk-tsk…. I’ll give you a hint: when Goethe—you were right there—was an old man, he fell in love with the young and charming Ulrike. He was foolish enough to offer his hand and was cruelly refused. From the doorway. Rather, from the window. The beauty stuck her head out the window and berated the Olympian—well, you know all that, you have to know. You’re old, and so on. A real Faust. You should eat more fish— it has phosphorus to make your brain work. Einmal in der Woche, Fisch. And she slammed the window.”

“No!” Galya said. “But why… I’ve read…”

“We’ve all read something, my dear,” Filin said, blooming. “I’m giving you the bare facts.” He sat more comfortably and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “So the old man wanders home, shattered. As they say, farewell, Antonina Petrovna, my unsung song…. He was stooped, the star on his neck went jingle jangle, jingle jangle…. It’s evening, dinner time. They serve game with peas. He loved game, I hope you’re not going to argue with that? The candles were lit, silverware on the table, you know, the German kind with knobs, and the aroma…. So, the children were there, and the grandchildren there. And in the corner, his secretary, Eckerman, settled in, writing. Goethe picked on a wing and tossed it aside. He couldn’t eat it. Nor the peas. The grandchildren say, Gramps, what’s the matter? He got up, threw his chair down, and said bitterly: once a week, she says, eat fish. He burst into tears and left. The Germans are sentimental. Eckerman, of course, put it all down. If you haven’t had a chance, read Conversations with Goethe. An edifying book. By the way, they used to exhibit that game bird— absolutely petrified by then—in a museum in Weimar, until 1932.”

“What did they do with the peas?” Galya asked furiously.

“Fed them to the cat.”

“Since when do cats eat vegetables?”

“Just try not eating them with the Germans. They have discipline.”

“What, did Eckerman write about the cat too?”

“Yes, it’s in the notes. Depends on the edition, of course.”

Galya got up, left, went downstairs and outside. Farewell, pink palace, farewell, my dream. Go fly in all four directions, Filin! We stood with arms extended—to whom? What did you give us? Your tree of golden fruit has withered and your words are just fireworks in the night, a brief sprint of colored wind, the hysteria of fiery roses in the darkness above our hair.

It was growing dark. The autumn wind played with bits of paper, scooping them out of the rubbish bins. She took one last look inside the store that gnawed at the foot of the palace like a transparent worm. She stood at the cheerless counters—beef bones, jars of “Dawn” brand vegetable puree. So then, let’s rub the tears across our cheeks, put out the candles with our spit: our god is dead, and his temple is empty. Farewell!

And now—home. The road is long. Ahead—is a new winter, new hopes, new songs. Well, then, let’s sing to the outskirts of town, sing the praises of the rain, of buildings gone gray, long evenings on the threshold of darkness. Let’s sing the empty lots, the brown grasses, the earth’s cold layers under an apprehensive foot, let’s sing the slow autumn dawn, the barking of a dog amid the aspen trees, fragile golden webs, and the first ice, the first bluish ice forming in the deep print of another’s footstep.

Even AS a child, Peters had flat feet and a woman’s broad belly. His late grandmother, who loved him as he was, taught him good manners—chew every little bit thoroughly, tuck your napkin under your chin, and be quiet when adults are talking. So his grandmother’s friends all liked him. When she took him visiting with her, he could safely be allowed to touch an expensive book with illustrations—he wouldn’t tear it—and at the table he never pulled the fringe from the tablecloth or crumbled his cookies—a wonderful boy. They liked the way he entered, too, tugging down his jacket in a dignified manner, adjusting his bow tie or lace jabot, as yellowed as his grandmother’s cheeks; and clicking the heels of his flat feet, he would introduce himself to the old ladies using the old Russian “s” (a contraction for “sir”) at the end of his name. “Peter-s!” He noticed that amused and touched them.

“Ah, Petya, child! So you call him Peter, do you?” “Yes… well… we’re studying German now,” his grandmother would say casually. And reflected in dull mirrors, Peters walked in measured tread down the hallway, past old trunks, past old smells, into rooms where rag dolls sat in corners, where green cheese dreamt under a green cover on the table and homemade cookies gave off a vanilla aroma. While the hostess put out the small silver spoons, corroded on one side, Peters wandered around the room, examining the dolls on the chest, the portrait of the severe, offended old man with a mustache like a long spoke, the vignettes on the wallpaper, or approached the window and looked through the thickets of aloe out into the sunny cold air where blue pigeons flew and rosy-cheeked children sledded down tracked hills. He wasn’t allowed to go outside.

The stupid nickname Peters stuck the rest of his life.

Peters’s mother, Grandmother’s daughter, ran off to warmer climes with a scoundrel, his father spent time with loose women and took no interest in his son. Listening to the grownups’ conversation, Peters pictured the scoundrel as a Negro under a banana palm and Father’s women as light blue and airy, floating around untethered like spring clouds; but, well brought up by his grandmother, he said nothing. Besides a grandmother, he also had a grandfather who used to lie quietly in the corner in an armchair, saying nothing and watching Peters with shining glassy eyes, then they laid him out on the dining room table, kept him there for two days, and then took him away. They had rice porridge that day.

Grandmother promised Peters that if he behaved, he would live marvelously when he grew up. Peters said nothing. In the evenings, in bed with his fuzzy bunny, he described his future life to it—how he would go out whenever he felt like it, play with all the kids, how Mama and the scoundrel would come visit and bring him sweet fruits, how Father’s loose women would float around with him, as if in a dream. The bunny believed him.