Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

The autumn was thickening when he purchased a heavy disc, chipped on one side, from a shark—they had haggled over the damage, the price was very high, and why? because Vera Vasilevna was forgotten, was never played on the radio, never flashed in a newsreel, and now only refined eccentrics, snobs, amateurs, and aesthetes who felt like throwing money on the incorporeal chased after her records, collected wire recordings, transcribed her low, dark voice that glowed like aged wine. The old woman’s still alive, the shark said, she lives somewhere in Leningrad, in poverty, they say, and shabbiness, she didn’t shine too long in her day, either; she lost her diamonds, husband, apartment, son, two lovers, and finally her voice: in that order; and she managed to handle all those losses before she was thirty-five, and she stopped singing back then, though she’s still alive. So that’s how it is, thought Simeonov with heavy heart on the way home over bridges and through gardens, across trolley tracks, thinking that’s how it is…. And locking the door, making tea, he put on his newly acquired treasure and, looking out the window at the heavy colored clouds looming on the sunset side, built, as usual, a section of the granite embankment, erected a bridge: the towers were heavier this time, and the chains were very cast iron, and the wind ruffled and wrinkled, agitated the broad gray smoothness of the Okkervil River, and Vera Vasilevna, tripping more than she ought in her uncomfortable heels invented by Simeonov, wrung her hands and bent her neatly coiffed head toward her sloping little shoulder—the moon glowed so softly, so softly, and my thoughts are full of you—the moon wouldn’t cooperate and slipped out like soap from his hands, sliding across the Okkervil clouds—there were always problems with the Okkervil skies—how restlessly the transparent, tamed shadows of our imagination scurry when the noises and smells of real life penetrate into their cool, foggy world.

Looking at the sunset rivers where the Okkervil River also had its source, already blooming with toxic greenery, already poisoned by the living breath of an old woman, Simeonov listened to the arguing voices of two struggling demons: one demanded he throw the old woman out of his head, lock the door—opening it occasionally for Tamara—and go on as before, loving moderately, longing moderately, in moments of solitude listening to the pure sound of the silver horn singing over the unknown foggy river; the other demon, a wild youth with a mind dimmed by translating bad books, demanded that he walk, run, to find Vera Vasilevna, a half-blind, impoverished, emaciated, hoarse, stick-legged old woman; find her, bend over her almost deaf ear, and shout through the years and misfortunes that she is the one and only, that he had passionately loved her always, that love still lives in his ailing heart, that she, the divine Peri, her voice rising from underwater depths, filling sails, speeding along the flaming waters of the night, surging upward, eclipsing half the sky, had destroyed and uplifted him—Simeonov, her faithful knight—and crushed by her silvery voice, the trolleys, books, processed cheeses, wet sidewalks, bird calls, Tamaras, cups, nameless women, passing years, and the weight of the world all rolled off like tiny pieces of gravel. And the old woman, stunned, would look at him with tear-filled eyes: What? You know me? It can’t be! My God! does anyone still care? I never thought—and bewildered, she wouldn’t know where to seat Simeonov, while tenderly holding her elbow and kissing her no longer white hand, covered with age spots, he would lead her to an armchair, peering into her faded face of old-fashioned bone structure. And looking at the part in her thin white hair with tenderness and pity, he would think: Oh, how we missed each other in this world. What madness that time separated us. (“Ugh, don’t” grimaced his inner demon, but Simeonov wanted to do what was right.)

He obtained Vera Vasilevna’s address in the most mundane and insulting way—for five kopeks at a sidewalk directory kiosk. His heart thumped: would it be Okkervil? of course not.

And not the embankment either. He bought chrysanthemums at the market—tiny yellow ones wrapped in cellophane. Long faded. And he picked up a cake at the bakery. The saleswoman took off the cardboard cover and showed him his selection on her outstretched hand: will it do?—but Simeonov did not notice what he was buying and recoiled, because Tamara was outside the bakery window—or was it his imagination?—going to get him, nice and warm, in his apartment. Only in the trolley did he untie his purchase and look inside. Not bad. Fruit. Decent looking. Lone fruits slept in the corners under a glassy gel: a slice of apple here; in a more expensive corner a chunk of peach; here half a plum frozen in eternal cold; here a mischievous, ladylike corner with three cherries. The sides were dusted with confectionery dandruff. The trolley jolted, the cake slipped, and Simeonov saw a clear thumbprint on the smooth jellied surface—either the careless baker’s or the clumsy saleswoman’s. No problem, the old woman doesn’t see well. I’ll cut it up right away. (“Go back”—his guardian demon sadly shook his head—“run for your life.”) Simeonov retied the box as best he could and began looking at the sunset. The Okkervil rushed noisily in a narrow stream, slapping the granite shores, and the shores crumbled like sand and crept into the water. He stood before Vera Vasilevnas house, shifting the presents from hand to hand. The gates he had to pass were ornamented with a fish-scale motif. Beyond: a horrible courtyard. A cat scurried by. Just as I thought. A great forgotten artist has to live off a courtyard like this. The back entrance, garbage cans, narrow iron banisters, dirt. His heart was pounding. Long faded. In my ailing heart.

He rang. (“ Fool,” said his inner demon, spat, and left Simeonov.) The door was flung open by the onslaught of noise, singing, and laughter pouring out of the apartment, and Vera Vasilevna appeared, white and huge, rouged, with thick black brows; appeared at the set table in the illuminated segment above a mound of sharply spiced hors d’oeuvres he could smell even from the doorway, above an enormous chocolate cake crowned with a chocolate bunny, laughing loudly, raucously; appeared and was selected by fate forever. He should have turned and left. Fifteen people at the table laughed, watching her: it was Vera Vasilevna’s birthday, and Vera Vasilevna, gasping with laughter, was telling a joke. She had begun telling it while Simeonov was going up the stairs, she was already cheating on him with those fifteen people while he fumbled and worried at the gate, shifting the defective cake from hand to hand, while he was still in the trolley, while he was locking himself in his apartment and clearing space on his dirty table for her silvery voice, while he was taking the heavy black disc with its moonlight radiance from the yellow jacket the very first time; even before he was born, when there was only wind rustling grass and silence reigned in the world. She was not waiting for him, thin, at the lancet window, peering into the distance into the glassy streams of the Okkervil River; she was laughing in a low voice over a table crowded with dishes, over salads, cucumbers, fish, and bottles, and she drank dashingly, the enchantress, and she turned her heavy body dashingly, too. She had betrayed him. Or had he betrayed Vera Vasilevna? It was too late to figure out now.

“Another one!” someone shouted laughingly, a man, he learned immediately, with the surname Kissov. “You have to pay a fine.” They took the fingerprinted cake and the flowers from Simeonov and squeezed him in at the table, making him drink to the health of Vera Vasilevna, health, as he was convinced, being the last thing she needed. Simeonov sat, smiling automatically, nodding, stabbing a pickled tomato with his fork, watching Vera Vasilevna like everyone else, listening to her loud jokes—his life was crushed, run over into two; it was his own fault, it was too late now; the magical diva had been abducted, she had allowed herself to be abducted, she hadn’t given a damn about the handsome sad balding prince promised her by fate, she didn’t wish to listen for his steps in the noise of the rain and the howling wind outside the autumn window-panes, didn’t wish to sleep enchanted for a hundred years after pricking her finger, she had surrounded herself with mortal, edible people, had made a friend of that horrible Kissov—made even closer, horribly, intimately, by the sound of his name— and Simeonov trampled the tall gray houses by Okkervil River, crushed the bridges with their towers and tossed away the chains, poured garbage into the clear gray water; but the river found itself a new course, and the houses stubbornly rose from the ruins, and carriages pulled by a pair of bays traveled over the bridges.