Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

“You’re really cute, too,” the indifferent girl insisted, not listening. “You dropped something.”

When he finally got up from the table, the angel had risen to heaven, and with it, Peters’s wallet and money. Got it. Well. So be it. Peters sat with his leftovers, as immobile as a suitcase, sobering up, imagining how he would have to explain, ask— the scorn and mockery of the coat check—fish for damp rubles in the swampy pockets of his raincoat, shaking out change that slipped fishlike into the lining… The music machine stomped and beat the drums, announcing someone’s coming passion. The cocktail evaporated through his ears. Cuc-koo! There.

What are you, life? A silent theater of Chinese shadows, a chain of dreams, a charlatan’s store? Or a gift of unrequited love—that’s all that is intended for me? What about happiness? What is happiness? Ingrate, you’re alive, you weep love strive fall and that’s not enough? What?… Not enough? Oh, is that so? There isn’t anything else.

“I’m waiting! I’m waiting!” shouted Elizaveta Frantsevna, a quick, curly-haired lady, throwing back latches and bolts, letting in the robbed Peters, dark, dangerous, full of misery up to his throat, to his top tight button.

“This way. Let’s start right away. Sit down on the couch. First lotto, then tea. All right? Quickly take a card. Who has a goat? I have a goat? Who has a guinea hen?”

I’m going to kill her, decided Peters. Elizaveta Frantsevna, look away, I’m going to kill you. You, and my late grand-mother, and the girl with warts, and Valentina, and the fake angel, and all those others—all of them who promised and tricked me, seduced and abandoned me; I’ll kill them in the name of all fat and wheezy, tongue-tied and awkward men, in the name of all of those locked in the dark closet, all those not invited to the party, get ready, Elizaveta Frantsevna, I’m going to smother you with that embroidered pillow. And no one will ever know.

“Frantsevna!” someone shouted and pounded on the door. “Give me three rubles, I’ll wash the hallway for you.”

The urge passed, Peters put aside the pillow. He wanted to sleep. The old woman rustled her money, Peters looked down at the “Domestic Animals” card.

“What are you thinking about? Who has a cat?”

“I have a cat,” Peters said. “Who else has one?” And he sidled out, crushing the cardboard cat in his fist. The hell with life. Sleep, sleep, fall asleep and don’t wake up.

Spring came and spring went and came again, and spread out blue flowers in the meadows and waved her hand and called through his sleep, “Peters! Peters!” but he slept soundly and heard nothing.

Summer rustled, wandered free in gardens, sitting on benches, swinging bare feet in the dust, calling Peters out on the warm street, the hot sidewalks; whispered, sparkling in the shimmer of linden trees, in the flutter of poplars; called, didn’t get an answer, and left, dragging its hem, into the light part of the horizon.

Life got on tiptoe and peered into the window in surprise: why was Peters asleep, why wasn’t he coming out to play its cruel games?

But Peters slept and slept and lived in his dream: neatly wiping his mouth, he ate vegetables and drank dairy products; he shaved his dull face—around his shut mouth and under his sleeping eyes—and once, accidentally, in passing, he married a cold, hard woman with big feet, with a dull name. The woman regarded people severely, knowing that people were crooks, that you couldn’t trust anyone; her basket held dry bread.

She took Peters with her everywhere, holding his hand tight, the way his grandmother once did, on Sundays they went to the zoological museum, into the resonant, polite halls—to look at still, woolen mice or the white bones of a whale; on weekdays they went out to stores, bought dead yellow macaroni, old people’s brown soap, and watched heavy vegetable oil pour through the narrow funnel, as thick as depression, endless and viscous, like the sands of the Arabian desert.

“Tell me,” the woman asked severely, “are the chickens chilled? Give me that one.” And “that one” is placed in the old shopping bag, and sleeping Peters carried home the cold young chicken, who had known neither love nor freedom, nor green grass nor the merry round eye of a girlfriend. And at home, under the watchful eye of the hard woman, Peters himself had to open up the chest of the chilled creature with knife and axe and tear out the slippery purplish heart, the red roses of the lungs, and the blue breathing stalk, in order to wipe out the memory in the ages of the one who was born and hoped, moved his young wings and dreamed of a green royal tail, of pearl grains, of the golden dawn over the waking world.

The summers and winters slipped by and melted, dissolving and fading, harvests of rainbows hung over distant houses, young greedy blizzards marauded from the northern forests, moving time forward, and the day came when the woman with big feet abandoned Peters, quietly shutting the door and leaving to buy soap and stir pots for another. Then Peters carefully opened his eyes and woke up.

The clock was ticking, fruit compote floated in a glass pitcher, and his slippers had grown cold overnight. Peters felt himself, counted his fingers and hairs. Regret flickered and passed. His body still remembered the quiet of past years, the heavy sleep of the calendar, but in the depths of his spiritual flesh something long forgotten, young and trusting, was stirring, sitting up, shaking itself, and smiling.

Old Peters pushed the window frame—the blue glass rang, a thousand yellow birds flew up, and the naked golden spring cried, laughing: catch me, catch me! New children played in the puddles with their buckets. And wanting nothing, regretting nothing, Peters smiled gratefully at life—running past, indifferent, ungrateful, treacherous, mocking, meaningless, alien —marvelous, marvelous, marvelous.

HAVING made it halfway through his earthly life, Denisov grew pensive. He started thinking about life, about its meaning, about the fleetingness of his half-spent existence, about his nighttime fears, about the vermin of the earth, about the beautiful Lora and several other women, about the fact that summers were humid nowadays, and about distant countries, in whose existence, truth be told, he found it hard to believe.

Australia aroused special doubt. He was prepared to believe in New Guinea, in the squeaky snap of its fleshy greenery, in the muggy swamps and black crocodiles: a strange place, but, all right. He conceded the existence of the tiny, colorful Philippines, he was ready to grant the light blue stopper of Antarctica—it hung right over his head, threatening to dislodge and shower him with stinging iceberg chips. Stretching out on a sofa with stiff, antediluvian bolsters and worn-out springs, smoking, Denisov glanced at the map of the hemispheres and disapproved of the continents’ placement. The top part’s not bad, reasonable enough: Landmasses here, water there, it’ll do. Another couple of seas in Siberia wouldn’t hurt. Africa could be lower. India’s all right. But down below everything’s badly laid out: the continents narrow down to nothing, islands are strewn about with no rhyme or reason, there are all kinds of troughs and trenches…. And Australia is obviously neither here nor there: anyone can see that logically there should be water in its place, but just look what you’ve got! Denisov blew smoke at Australia and scanned the water-stained ceiling: on the floor above him lived a seafaring captain, as white, gold, and magnificent as a dream, as ephemeral as smoke, as unreal as the dark blue southern seas. Once or twice a year he materialized, showed up at home, took a bath, and drenched Denisov’s apartment along with everything in it, though there wasn’t anything in it other than the sofa and Denisov. Well, a refrigerator stood in the kitchen. A tactful man, Denisov couldn’t bring himself to ask: What’s the matter?—especially since no later than the morning following the cataclysm the splendid captain would ring the doorbell, hand him an envelope with a couple of hundred rubles—for repairs—and depart with a firm stride. He was off on a new voyage.