Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

“How fine, my sweets!” exclaimed Bakhtiyarov in surprise. “How fine our comrade sang for us. Downright pianissimo and nothing else. No other word for it. Come on now, let’s show him our stuff. In reply. Let’s give our guest a taste of our D-flat.”

The guests burst into song; the lilac fidget—all attentiveness—conducted with a fork, tears streamed from the beauty’s dead eyes; the diners from neighboring tables, wiping their mouths with their napkins, joined the chorus, Klavdiya’s soprano entered on a piercing, violinlike note:

There, in the mountains, the snow began to fall thicker and thicker, sweeping into drifts, burying Makov, his sprawled legs, his face turned toward eternity. He doesn’t rot, he doesn’t rust, he doesn’t sweat, he gets his rest. The snowdrifts rose higher and higher, the mountain creaked under the weight of the snow; it groaned and cracked, and with the roar of a steam engine the avalanche fell, and nothing remained on the peak. A snowy mist smoked a bit and settled on the cliffs.

“Dear visitor! Aren’t I your friend—to the bitter end!” cried Bakhtiyarov, grabbing Denisov by the cheeks. “How do you like that? I’m talking in verse. That’s me. No stranger to poetry. Eh? That’s just the way I am. Drink your Buratino to my health. Bottoms up, bottoms up! That’s the ticket. You know what: Humor an old friend. If you go to town, go all the way. Crawl under the table. For fun! Go on!”

“What the…” said Denisov, free of Makov. “Who do you think you are, old man? Arrivederci to you, I don’t need your cabinet. I changed my mind.” And he started to get up.

“Under the table. What’s going on? What’s the matter?” Bakhtiyarov tore at his coat. “We’re asking you. Gentlemen!”

“Go on, go on!” shouted the ladies, friends, guests, waiters, even the cook, who appeared from out of the blue, and the entire room, rising to its feet, moving out from behind the tables, still chewing, made a scene and clapped: “Go on!”

No, for goodness’ sake, no, no, no! Why? I’m a human being, and proud to be one. I won’t crawl, go ahead and kill me!… Yes, but what about suffering? Hey, remember! Suffering! You’re the one who wanted it.

He plunged into despair, as though facing death, he lost heart, he frowned—it didn’t help, he wanted to take a deep breath—there was no air left to breathe. And Bakhtiyarov had already thrown back the tablecloth and seated himself sideways so that his legs wouldn’t be in the way. He gestured invitingly with his hand: Go ahead, be my guest!

…He huddled in the half-light of the darned linen, hugging his knees like an embryo, and gazed dumbly at the women’s legs, the silvered tails, and the lacquered hooves; the insidious repast had clouded his hearing and sight; the soprano set his teeth on edge. Here’s what I’ll do. I know. I’ll erect a monument to the forgotten. Even if it’s only a flat patch of land in the middle of the steppes, with no fence, no marker—let feather grass or rushes grow there, let the sun scorch the earth till the salt comes out, let gravel or broken glass litter the ground, let a jackal howl in the evenings or a boisterous crowd feast. Greetings to you, tin cans, and to you, beer caps, glory to spittle, hurrah for squashed tomatoes. A hill of garbage or a salty clearing, the whoosh of feather grass or the whistle of the wind—anything will do, it makes no difference, nothing frightens the forgotten—after all, nothing else can happen to them.

A tearstained, eyeless female face hung under the table and muttered, seeking sympathy:

“Why, tell me why’s it allays rile lires, salastically yuffy for some, and others only get lurdle, glud, and droom, why?”

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.

The Buratino had made Denisov drowsy, and he fell asleep.

A moonbeam, breaking through a darned patch, stabbed him in the eye. The moonlit tablecloth lay on the parquet floor, a silvery garden stood beyond the window, August ignited stars in the dark. It was as if all the snow from all the mountains were cascading onto the garden, the silence, and the mute paths. Denisov creaked across the floorboards and stood by the window. He hadn’t dreamt about anyone today.

The cock crowed, Bakhtiyarov and his warlocks had vanished, the shades were sleeping, the world was at peace.

And what kind of nonsense was this anyway—to be tormented by memories of nothing at all, to ask forgiveness from a dead man for something you weren’t guilty of in human reckoning, to clutch handfuls of fog? There isn’t any fifth dimension, and no one will keep count of your sins and victories, and there isn’t any punishment or reward at the end of the road, there isn’t even a road, and fame is smoke, and the soul is vapor, and if you crawled under the table, well, pardon me, my dear, but that was your choice, a matter of personal taste, and humanity will not follow after you in a grateful throng, and unseen forces won’t cry out from the everlasting azure: “Good going, Denisov, attaboy! Keep up the good work! We fully approve and support you!”

He walked around the Fairy Tale, pulling on doors, all of which were locked. Well, what a pickle! Now just sit there till morning. Break a window, or what? There’s probably an alarm here. It’s a small village, everything’s out in the open—they’ll whistle, lights will blink, the police will move in; if they don’t catch you in the garden, then they’ll get you on the highway for sure. “The heavens are wondrous and exultant, earth slumbers in a luminous blue glow,” and Denisov is going to rush about among the bushes and watchman’s booths, squat behind trash cans, and rustle in the hawthorn to elude the searchlights. There’s no point in it. A rampart of darkness encircles the world; incorporeal moon sugar will sift from leaf to leaf, trembling and glinting; sugar, snow, dreams, depths, everything has frozen, everything’s dying, growing dull in the senseless beauty, everything’s forgotten, forgiven, and anyway nothing happened, and nothing ever will.

Oh, here’s the phone. Call Lora. I myself have died—help others to help themselves.

Lora sounded congested.

“Oh, Denisov, take a taxi, come over. A horrific accident happened. What do you mean, you’re locked in? In what fairy tale? Have you gone out of your mind, Denisov, I’m in the middle of a nightmare, it’s the problem with Papa, I took him to the country, to an old woman, you don’t know her, old lady Liza, she’s a healer and a wonderful woman. Ruzanna recommended her, to read Papa; how do they do that? Well, they sit you on a stool under an icon, light a candle, the wax drips into a basin, old lady Liza reads prayers, the energy field improves a lot; it’s all calculated to last several sessions; so you can imagine, in the meantime I took off for the village store, they have a good selection there, men’s shirts from Holland, I wanted to get you some, but they were all gone, and I got held up looking at the goods for shareholders, I don’t know what shareholders, some kind of consumer co-op or something. Well, for people who bring in birch sponge mushrooms they have men’s moccasins, white ones, Austrian, exactly what you need, you can get jeans for meat and felt pens for carrots, we don’t need any of that, but the moccasins would be good; so I said to the salesgirls: Girls, I don’t have any birch sponges, maybe you’d sell me a pair anyway? And one of them, really nice, said: Wait for the boss, maybe you can arrange something; I waited and waited, and it was already dark, but no one came, and they said: It’s not likely she’ll come back—her boyfriend from Severomorsk was supposed to visit her, so I went back, and old lady Liza was in a frightful panic. She said he was just sitting, sitting there and he fell asleep, and when he falls asleep, well, you know what he gets like; he fell asleep, jumped up, threw the door open and started running, and it was dark outside, and the area’s completely unfamiliar, and he just ran off, I don’t know what to do, Denisov, I’ve been to the police and they just laugh at me. Anyway, I’m home now, completely wiped out, I mean, Papa doesn’t have a penny on him, he’ll wake up somewhere in the forest, he’ll lose his way, he’ll freeze, he’ll die, he doesn’t know where I took him, he’s lost. Denisov, what have I gone and done!”