Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

“No! it’s not you! I love! so passionately!” Vera Vasilevna skipped, creaking and hissing, quickly spinning under the needle; the hiss creak and spin formed a black tunnel that widened into the gramophone horn, and triumphant in her victory over Simeonov, speeding out of the festooned orchid of her voice, divine, low, dark, lacy, and dusty at first and then throbbing with underwater pressure, rising up from the depths, transforming, trembling on the water like flames— pshsts-pshsts-pshsts, pshsts-pshsts-pshsts —filling like a sail, getting louder, breaking hawsers, speeding unrestrained pshsts-pshsts-pshsts a caravel over the nocturnal waters splashing flames—stronger— spreading its wings, gathering speed, smoothly tearing away from the remaining bulk of the flow that had given birth to it, away from the tiny Simeonov left on shore, his balding bare head lifted to the gigantic, glowing, dimming half sky to the voice coming in a triumphant cry—no, it wasn’t he whom Vera Vasilevna loved so passionately, but still, essentially, she loved only him, and it was mutual. Kh-shch-shch-shch.

Simeonov carefully removed the now silent Vera Vasilevna, shaking the record, holding it between straightened, respectful hands; he examined the ancient label: Ah, where are you now, Vera Vasilevna? Where are your white bones now? And turning her over on her back, he placed the needle, squinting at the olive-black shimmer of the bobbing thick disc, and listened once more, longing for the long-faded, pshsts, chrysanthemums in the garden, pshsts, where they had met, and once again, gathering underwater pressure, throwing off dust, laces, and years, Vera Vasilevna creaked and appeared as a languorous naiad—an unathletic, slightly plump turn-of-the-century naiad—O sweet pear, guitar, hourglass, slope-hipped champagne bottle!

And by then the teakettle would be aboil, and Simeonov, fishing some processed cheese or ham scraps from the window-sill, would put the record on again and have a bachelor feast off a newspaper, delighting in the fact that Tamara would not find him today, would not disturb his precious rendezvous with Vera Vasilevna. He was happy alone in his small apartment, alone with Vera Vasilevna. The door was securely locked against Tamara, and the tea was strong and sweet, and the translation of the unneeded book from the rare language was almost complete—he would have money soon, and Simeonov would buy a scarce record from a shark for a high price, one where Vera Vasilevna regrets that spring will come but not for her—a man’s romance, a romance of solitude, and the incorporeal Vera Vasilevna will sing it, merging with Simeonov into a single longing, sobbing voice. O blessed solitude! Solitude eats right out of the frying pan, spears a cold meat patty from a murky half-liter jar, makes tea right in the mug—so what? Peace and freedom! A family rattles the dish cupboard, sets out traps of cups and saucers, catches your soul with knife and fork—gets it under the ribs from both sides—smothers it with a tea caddy, tosses a tablecloth over its head, but the free lone soul slips out through the linen fringe, squeezes like an eel through the napkin ring, and— hop! catch me if you cani —it’s back in the dark magical circle filled with flames, outlined by Vera Vasilevna’s voice, following her skirts and fan from the bright ballroom out onto the summer balcony at night, the spacious semicircle above a sweet-smelling bed of chrysanthemums; well, actually, their white, dry, and bitter aroma is an autumnal one, a harbinger of fall separation, oblivion, but love still lives in my ailing heart— .1 sickly smell, the smell of sadness and decay, where are you now, Vera Vasilevna, perhaps in Paris or Shanghai and which rain—Parisian light blue or Chinese yellow—drizzles over your grave, and whose soil chills your white bones? No, it’s not you I love so passionately. (That’s what you say. Of course it’s me, Vera Vasilevna.)

Trolleys passed Simeonov’s window, once upon a time clanging their bells and swinging the hanging loops that resembled stirrups—Simeonov kept thinking that the horses were hidden up in the ceiling, like portraits of trolley ancestors taken up to the attic; but the bells grew still, and now all he heard was the rattle, clickety-clack, and squeals on the turns, and at last the red-sided cars with wooden benches died, and the new cars were rounded, noiseless, hissing at stops, and you could sit, plopping down on the soft seat that gasped and gave up the ghost beneath you, and ride off into the blue yonder to the last stop, beckoning with its name: Okkervil River. But Simeonov had never gone there. It was the end of the world and there was nothing there for him, but that wasn’t it, really: without seeing or knowing that distant, almost non-Leningrad river, he could imagine it in any way he chose: a murky greenish flow, for instance, with a slow green sun murkily floating in it, silvery willows softly hanging down from the gentle bank, red brick two-story houses with tile roofs, humped wooden bridges—a quiet world in a sleepy stupor; but actually it was probably filled with warehouses, fences, and some stinking factory spitting out mother-of-pearl toxic gases, a dump smoldering smelly smoke, or something else hopeless, provincial, and trite. No, no reason to be disillusioned by going to Okkervil River, it was better to mentally plant long-haired willows on its banks, set up steep-roofed houses, release slow-moving residents, perhaps in German caps, striped stockings, with long porcelain pipes in their mouths… even better to pave the Okkervil’s embankment, fill the river with gray water, sketch in bridges with towers and chains, smooth out the granite parapets with a curved template, line the embankment with tall gray houses with cast iron grates on the windows—with a fish-scale motif on top of the gates and nasturtiums peeking from the balconies—and settle young Vera Vasilevna there and let her walk, pulling on a long glove, along the paving stones, placing her feet close together, stepping daintily with her black snub-toed slippers with apple-round heels, in a small round hat with a veil, through the still drizzle of a St. Petersburg morning; and in that case, make the fog light blue.

Let’s have light blue fog. The fog in place, Vera Vasilevna walks, her round heels clicking, across the entire paved section held in Simeonov’s imagination, here’s the edge of the scenery, the director’s run out of means, he is powerless and weary, he releases the actors, crosses out the balconies with nasturtiums, gives those who like it the grating with fish-scale motif, flicks the granite parapets into the water, stuffs the towered bridges into his pockets—the pockets bulge, the chains droop as if from grandfather’s watch, and only the Okkervil River flows on, narrowing and widening feverishly, unable to select a permanent image for itself.

Simeonov ate processed cheese, translated boring books, sometimes brought women home in the evenings and in the morning, disappointed, saw them out— no! it’s not you! —hid from Tamara, who kept coming over with washed laundry and fried potatoes and flowered curtains for the windows, and who assiduously kept forgetting important things at Simeonov’s—hairpins or a handkerchief she needed urgently by nightfall, and she would travel across the whole city to get them, and Simeonov would put out the light and stand pressed against the foyer wall while she banged on the door, and very often he gave in, and then he had a hot meal for dinner and drank strong tea from a blue and gold cup and had homemade cookies for dessert, and it was too late for Tamara to go back home, of course; the last trolley had gone and it wouldn’t reach the foggy Okkervil River, and Tamara would fluff up the pillows while Vera Vasilevna—turning her back and not listening to Simeonov’s explanations—would walk into the night along the embankment, swaying on her apple-round heels.