Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

The cups had been stolen, so they drank tea from glasses. Snow-white Papa, cozy, like a Siberian tomcat, ate doughnuts, shutting his eyes in contentment. We, too, are like those three —the old man, the woman, the fat man—thought Denisov; we, too, have banded together high above the city; seen from the outside, what unites us? A little family, we need each other, we’re weak and confused, robbed by fate: he’s out of work, she’s out of her mind, I’m out of a future. Perhaps we should huddle even closer, hold hands—if one of us trips, the other two will hold him up—eat doughnuts, and not strive for anything, lock ourselves away from people, live without raising our heads, not expecting fame… and at the appointed hour close our eyes a bit tighter, tie up our jaws, cross our hands on our chests… and safely dissolve into nonbeing? No, no—not for anything!

“They took all the curtains, the creeps.” Lora sighed. “What do they need my curtains for anyway?”

The fog settled, or perhaps it hadn’t risen to the sixteenth floor, that light summer fog. Pure blackness and the jeweled lights of distant dwellings looked into the naked windows, and on the horizon, in the Japanese-lacquer dark, the orange half-circle of the rising moon swelled, looking like a mountaintop that had pushed through, illuminated by fruit-colored morning light. Somewhere in the mountains Lora’s classmate Makov, who had risen higher than everyone and remained there forever, slept an eternal sleep.

The rose-colored summit grows lighter, the cliffs are dusted with snow, Makov lies there gazing into the firmament; cold and magnificent, pure and free, he won’t decay, won’t grow old, won’t cry, won’t destroy anyone, won’t become disillusioned by anything. He is immortal. Could there be a more enviable fate?

“Listen,” Denisov said to Lora, impressed, “if those jerks of yours didn’t know anything about this Makov, then maybe his coworkers do?… Couldn’t a museum be organized or something? And why not rename your school in his honor? After all, he made it famous.”

Lora was surprised: what museum, good Lord, Denisov, a museum, why? As a student he was nothing to brag about, he dropped out of college, then he went into the army, did this and that, and in recent years worked as a stoker because he liked to read books. He drove his family crazy, it was awful, I know from Ninka Zaitseva, because her mother-in-law works with Makov’s mother. There’s no way the school can be named after Makov anyway, because it’s already named after A. Kolbasiavichius. And his story isn’t all that straightforward either, because, you see, there were two Kolbasiavichius brothers, twins, one was killed by Lithuanian partisan rebels in ’46, and the second was a rebel himself and died from eating bad mushrooms. And since their initials were the same, and even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart, an extremely ambiguous situation arises. You could say that the school is named after the hero-brother, but at one time local hero-trackers came up with the theory that the hero-brother infiltrated the rebel den and was perfidiously killed by the bandits, who saw through the substitution and fed him poisonous soup, while the bandit-brother realized the error of his ways and honorably went to turn himself in, but was accidentally shot. Do you get it, Denisov? One of them is a hero for sure, but which one hasn’t been established. Our director was just going crazy, she even filed a petition to have the school’s name changed. But there can’t even be any question of naming it after Makov, I mean, he’s not some steelworker, right?

There you have it, human memory, human gratitude, thought Denisov, and he felt guilty. Who am I? No one. Who is Makov? A forgotten hero. Perhaps fate, shod in gold boots, is giving me a hint. Stop tossing and turning, Denisov—here is your goal in life, Denisov! Extricate this perished youth from nonbeing, save him from oblivion; if they laugh at you—be patient, if they persecute you—stand firm, if they humiliate you—suffer for your idea. Don’t betray the forgotten, the forgotten are knocking at our dreams, begging for alms, howling in the night.

Later, as Denisov was falling asleep in the pillaged apartment high above Moscow, and Lora was falling asleep next to him, her dark hair redolent of roses, the blue moon climbed in the sky, deep shadows fell, something creaked in the depths of the apartment, rustled in the foyer, thumped beyond the door, and softly, evenly, slowly—click-clack—moved along the corridor, skipped to the kitchen, made a door squeak, turned around, and—clack-clack-clack—went back again.

“Hey, Lora, what is that?”

“Sleep, Denisov, it’s nothing. Later.”

“What do you mean, later? Do you hear what’s going on?”

“Oh Lord,” whispered Lora. “Well, it’s Papa, Papa! I told you I had problems with Papa. He’s a somnambulist—he walks in his sleep. I told you that they kicked him out of work, well, it started right after that. What can I do? I’ve been to see the best doctors! Tengiz Georgievich said: He’ll run around a bit and stop. But Anna Efimovna said: What do you want, it’s his age. And Ivan Kuzmich said: Just thank your lucky stars he’s not out chasing devils. And through Ruzanna I found a psychic at the Ministry of Heavy Industry, but after that session it only got worse: he runs around naked. Go to sleep Denisov, we can’t do anything to help him anyway.”

But how could he possibly sleep, especially since the zoologist, judging by the sound, had skipped back to the kitchen, and something fell with a crash.

“Oh, I’m going to go stark-raving mad,” Lora said, growing anxious. “He’ll break the last glasses.”

Denisov pulled on his pants and Lora ran to her father; shouts could be heard.

“Now what is he doing? Lord almighty, he’s put on my boots! Papa, I’ve told you a thousand times…. Papa, for heaven’s sake, wake up!”

“Warm-blooded, ha-ha!” shouted the old man, sobbing. “They call themselves warm-blooded. Mere protozoa, I say. Get your pseudopods out of here!”

“Denisov, grab him from the side! Papochka, Papochka, calm down! I’ll get some valerian…. His hands, hold his hands!”

“Let me go! There they are! I see them!” The sleepwalker broke away, and somehow he mustered incredible strength. His mustache and beard seemed like wintry, woolly things on his naked body.

“Papa, for heaven’s sake!”

“Vasily Vasilevich!”

Night flew over the world, in the distant dark the ocean seethed, distraught Australians looked around, distressed by the disappearance of their continent, the captain drenched Denisov’s smoke-filled lair with bitter tears, Rykushin, famished with fame, ate cold leftovers straight out of the pot, Ruzanna slept facing east, Makov slept facing nowhere. Each was occupied with his own affairs, and who cared that in the middle of the city, many stories up, in the moon’s mother-of-pearl light, real live people were in the throes of struggling, stamping, shouting, and suffering: Lora in her transparent nightshirt—a sight that even tsars would not be loath to gaze upon—the zoologist in gold boots, and Denisov, tormented by visions and doubts.

…The countryside around this cluster of dachas was marvelous—oaks everywhere and under the oaks, lawns, and on the lawns people playing volleyball in the reddish evening light. The ball smacked resonantly, a slow wind passed through the oaks, and the oaks slowly answered the wind. And Makov’s dacha was also marvelous—old, gray, with little towers. Amid the flower beds, under the damp evening-time wild cherry tree, his four sisters, mother, stepfather, and aunt sat at a round table drinking tea with raspberries and laughing. The aunt held an infant in her arms, and he waved a plastic parrot; to the side a harmless dog lay endearingly; and some kind of bird walked unhurriedly about its business along the path, not troubling, even out of courtesy, to become alarmed and flutter off at the sight of Denisov. Denisov was a little disappointed by the idyllic scene. It would have been pointless, of course, to expect that the house and garden would be draped in mourning banners, that everyone would walk on tiptoe, that the mother, black with grief, would be lying motionless on the bed, unable to take her eyes off her son’s ice axe, and that from time to time first one, then another member of the family would clutch a crumpled handkerchief and bite it to stifle the sobs—but all the same, he had expected something sad. But they had forgotten, they had all forgotten! Then again, who was he to talk, arriving with a bouquet, as if to congratulate them?… They turned to Denisov with perplexed, frightened smiles, looked at the bunch of carnations in his hand, crimson like a sunset before foul weather, like clotted, bloody scabs, like memento mori. The infant, the most sensitive, having not yet forgotten that frightening darkness from which he had recently been called, immediately guessed who had sent Denisov; he kicked and screamed, wanted to warn them, but didn’t know the words.