Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

“The Wolf. Canis lupus. Diet.”

“The wolf’s diet is varied.”

“The wolf has a varied diet: rodents, domesticated livestock.”

“Varied is the diet of the gray one: here you have both rodents and domesticated livestock.”

“How varied is the diet of the wolfling cub—our little gray dumpling tub: you’ll find both bitty baby rabbits and curly little lambs….”

Don’t worry, don’t worry, Papa, my darling, write on; everything will pass. Everything will be fine. Denisov is the one destroyed by doubts, worm-eaten thoughts, cast-iron dreams. Denisov is the one who suffers, as if from heartburn, who kisses Lora on the top of the head, rides home, collapses on the sofa under the map of the hemispheres, his socks toward Tierra del Fuego, his head beneath the Philippines. It’s Denisov who sets an ashtray on his chest and envelops the cold mountains of Antarctica in smoke—after all, someone is sitting there right now, digging in the snow in the mighty name of science; here’s some smoke for you, guys—warm yourselves up; it’s Denisov who denies the existence of Australia, nature’s mistake, who feebly dreams of the captain—time for another drenching, the money’s run out—and whose thoughts again turn to fame, memory, immortality….

He had a dream. He bought some bread, it seems—the usual: one loaf, round, and a dozen bagels. And he’s taking it somewhere. He’s in some sort of house. Maybe an office building—there are hallways, staircases. Suddenly three people, a man, a woman, and an old man, who had just been talking with him calmly—one was explaining something, one was giving him advice about how to get somewhere—saw the bread and sort of jerked, as if they were about to attack him but immediately refrained. And the woman says: “Excuse me, is that bread you have there?” “Yes, I bought it—” “Won’t you give it to us?” He looks and suddenly sees: Why, they’re siege victims. They’re hungry. Their eyes are very strange. And he immediately understands: Aha, they’re victims of the siege of Leningrad, that means I’m one too. That means there’s nothing to eat. Greed instantly overwhelms him. Only a minute ago bread was a trifle, nothing special, he bought it just like he always does, and now suddenly he begrudges it. And he says: “We-ell, I don’t know. I need it myself. I don’t know. I don’t know.” They say nothing and look him straight in the eyes. The woman is trembling. Then he takes one bagel, the one with the fewest poppy seeds, breaks it into pieces, and hands it out; but he takes one piece for himself all the same, he holds it back. He crooks his hand strangely—in real life you couldn’t bend it that way—and keeps the piece of bagel. He doesn’t know why, well, simply… so as not to give everything away at once…. And he leaves posthaste, leaves these people with their outstretched hands, and suddenly he’s back at home and he understands: What the devil kind of siege? There is no siege. We’re living in Moscow anyway, seven hundred kilometers away—what is this all of a sudden? The refrigerator is full, and I’m full, and out the window people are walking around contented, smiling…. And he is instantly ashamed, and feels an unpleasant queasiness around his heart, and that plump loaf oppresses him, and the remaining bagels are like the links of a broken chain, and he thinks: So there, I shouldn’t have been so greedy! Why was I? What a swine… And he rushes back: Where are they, those hungry people? But they aren’t anywhere to be found, that’s it, too late, my friend, you blew it, go look your heart out, all the doors are locked, time has opened and slammed shut, go on then, live, live, you’re allowed! But let me in!… Open up! It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to be horrified, I wasn’t prepared. But I simply wasn’t prepared! He knocks at a door, bangs on it with his foot, kicks it with his heel. The door opens wide and there is a cafeteria, a café of some sort; tranquil diners are coming out, wiping well-fed mouths, macaroni and meat patties lie picked apart on the plates…. Those three passed by like shades lost in time; they dissolved, disintegrated, they’re gone, gone, and will never come back. The branches of a naked tree sway, reflected in the water, there’s a low sky, the burning stripe of the sunset, farewell.

Farewell! And he surfaces on his bed, on the sofa, he’s surfaced, the sheets are all tangled around his legs, he doesn’t understand anything. What nonsense, really, what is all this? If he would just fall asleep again immediately, everything would pass and by morning it would be forgotten, erased, like words written on sand, on the sea’s sonorous shore—but no, unsettled by what he had seen, he got up for some reason, went to the kitchen, and, staring senselessly straight ahead, ate a meat-patty sandwich.

A dark July dawn was just breaking, the birds weren’t even singing yet, no one was walking on the street—just the right sort of time for shades, visions, succubi, and phantoms.

How did they put it? “Give it to us”—was that it? The more he thought about them, the clearer the details became. As alive as you and me, honestly. No, worse than alive. The old man’s neck, for example, materialized and persisted, stubbornly incarnating itself, a wrinkled, congealed brown neck, as dark as the skin of a smoked salmon. The collar of a whitish, faded blue shirt. And a bone button, broken in half. The face was indistinct—an old man’s face, that’s all. But the neck, the collar, and the button stayed before his eyes. The woman, metamorphosing, pulsating this way and that, took the shape of a thin, tired blonde. She looked a little like his deceased Aunt Rita.

But the other man was fat.

No, no, they behaved improperly. That woman, how did she ask: “What’ve you got there, bread?” As if it weren’t obvious! Yes, bread! He shouldn’t have carried it in his string bag, but in a plastic bag, or at least wrapped in paper. And what was this: “Give it to us”? Now what kind of thing is that to say? What if he had a family, children? Maybe he has ten children? Maybe he was bringing it to his children, how do they know? So what if he doesn’t have any children, that’s his business, after all. He bought the bread, therefore he needed it. He was walking along minding his own business. And suddenly: “Give it to us!” How’s that for a declaration?

Why did they pester him? Yes, he did begrudge the bread, he did have that reflex, it’s true, but he gave them a bagel, and a flavorful, expensive, rosy bagel, by the way, is better, more valuable than black bread, if you come right down to it. That’s for starters. Second, he immediately came to his senses and rushed back, he wanted to set things right, but everything had moved, changed, warped—what could he do? He looked for them— honestly, clearly, with full awareness of his guilt; he banged on doors, what could he do if they decided not to wait and vanished? They should have stayed put, held on to the railings— there were railings—and waited quietly until he ran back to help them. They just couldn’t be patient for ten seconds, how do you like that? No, not ten, not seconds, everything’s different there, space slips away, and time collapses sideways like a ragged wave, and everything spins, spins like a top: there, one second is huge, slow, and resonant, like an abandoned cathedral, another is tiny, sharp, fast—you strike a match and burn up a thousand millennia; a step to the side—and you’re in another universe…

And that man, come to think of it, was the most unpleasant of them all. For one thing, he was very stout, sloppily stout. He held himself a bit apart, and although he was aloof, he looked on with displeasure. And he didn’t try to explain the way to Denisov either, he didn’t take part in the conversation at all, but he did take the bagel. Ha, he took the bagel, he pushed himself ahead of the others. He even elbowed the old man. And him, fatter than everyone. And his hand was so white, like a child’s, stretched taut and covered with freckles like spilt millet, and he had a hook nose and a head like an egg, and those glasses. A nasty sort all round, and you couldn’t even figure out what he was doing there, in that company. He obviously wasn’t with them, he had simply run up and hung around, saw that something was being given out—so, why not…. The woman, Aunt Rita… She seemed the hungriest of the three…. But I gave her a bagel, after all! It’s a real luxury in their situation—a fresh, rosy morsel like that…. Oh God, what a situation! Who am I justifying myself to? They don’t exist, they don’t. Not here, not there, nowhere. A murky, fleeting, nighttime vision, a trickle of water on glass, a momentary spasm in some deep dead end of the brain; some worthless, useless capillary burst, a hormone gurgled, something skipped a beat in the cerebellum or the hippocampus—what do they call them, those neglected side streets? Neglected side streets, paved thoroughfares, dead houses, night, a street lamp sways, a shadow flits by—was it a bat, a night-flying bird, or simply an autumn leaf falling? Suddenly everything trembles, dampens, floats, and stops again—a short, cold rain had fallen and vanished.