Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

Asleep in Serafimovsky Cemetery, Grandmother approved of Konovalov, but she’d gone and taken his address with her. Natasha flipped through the phone book: Konovalovs multiplied like cards in a deck, they scattered about the city like ants, their little black numbers blinked—one lived here, on Liteiny. It was easy to say: find Konovalov…. A copper bell with a round inscription: “please turn.” Brrring, brring, brrriiinngg! Silence.

Slip-slap—footsteps. The bar clanks; squealing, a two-foot-long iron-smelling hook flies off; a chain scrapes. A suspicious old lady sticks a yellow, hairy nose out from the darkness, the smell of kasha wafts through the door: “Who do you want?”— “Konovalov.”—“He’s not home.” Bang!—the door slams shut. Maybe he lives in a new building, on Rzhevka, or Grazhdanka, or on Silvery Boulevard, all riddled with rusty wire?… “Who’s there?” “I’m looking for Konovalov, please….” A surprised wife —dark, thin—wipes her hands on her apron, perplexed: Come in, please, but… Behind her—an unfamiliar, alien apartment, their apartment, the unread story of a life that has passed without me…. Konovalov comes out, chewing: “Who are you?…”

No, but maybe he actually lives out of town? In some two-story wooden house…. A rooster wanders about the yard, tiger lilies bloom near the porch, the ground is trampled, packed down by feet…. A front door—like a dacha outhouse, and farther on, up a steep stair—a dark entryway, a hanging horse collar, wooden washtubs…. “It’s Konovalov you want? Upstairs, upstairs, knock on the door….” And he’s lying in his boots on the bed, a cigarette in his hand, flowers in the windows, a grandfather clock: ticktock, ticktock; the pinecone weight crawls down…. And what will I say to him? “Oh, Konovalov! If once you loved a green, unripe sapling, then won’t you now take autumn’s withering, rotting fallen fruit?…”

In the cemetery where old lady Morshanskaya was buried there was also a Konovalov, but that one was four years old, and in the last century for that matter; and besides, the little tombstone angel, pressing a green finger to his mossy lips, invited silence.

Natasha knitted Gagin a pair of socks: The old man’s room was damp. She mustn’t forget to caulk the windows for the winter. Some wonderful star pupils presented her with a colorful album for her birthday: Cats of Europe. The elevator began to break down more frequently. You can rarely buy good tea nowadays. Did you hear, there’s a cold front coming in tomorrow? Listen to that wind howl. And Natasha went to the window and listened, and nothing, nothing could be heard but the din of passing life.

IN THE mornings Alexei Petrovich’s mama yawns loud and long: hurrah, onward, a new morning gushes in through the window; the cactuses shine, the curtains quiver; the gates of the nighttime realm have slammed shut; dragons, mushrooms, and frightening dwarfs have plunged below the earth once again, life triumphs, the heralds blow their horns: a new day! a new day! Da-da-da da da-daa!

Mamochka combs her thinning hair oh so quickly with her hands, throws her bluish legs over the high bed frame—let them hang for a moment and think: all day they’ll have to drag around the 135 kilos that Mamochka has accumulated in the course of eighty years.

Alexei Petrovich opened his eyes: sleep slips serenely from his body; everything is forgotten, the last crow flies off into the gloom; the nocturnal guests, gathering their ghostly, ambiguous props, have interrupted the play until next time. A breeze sweetly fans Alexei Petrovich’s bald spot, the newly grown bristle on his cheeks pricks his palm. Isn’t it time to get up? Mamochka will give the order. Mamochka is so big, loud, and spacious, and Alexei Petrovich is so little. Mamochka knows everything, can do everything, gets in everywhere. Mamochka is all powerful. Whatever she says, goes. And he—is a late child, a little bundle, nature’s blunder, a soap sliver, a weed intended for burning that accidentally wormed its way in among its healthy brethren when the Sower generously scattered the full-blooded seeds of life about the earth.

Can I get up already, or is it early? Don’t squawk. Mamochka is carrying out her morning ritual: She honks into a handkerchief, pulls her stockings, sticking and prickling, onto the columns of her legs, fastens them under her swollen knees with little rings of white rubber. She hoists a linen frame with fifteen buttons onto her monstrous breast; buttoning it in the back is probably hard. The gray chignon is reattached at Mamochka’s zenith; shaken from a clean nighttime glass, her freshened teeth flutter. Mamochka’s facade will be concealed under a white, pleated dickey, and, hiding the seams on the back, the insides out, napes, back stairs, and emergency exits—a sturdy dark blue jacket will cover the whole majestic building. The palace has been erected.

Everything you do is good, Mamochka. Everything’s right.

Everyone is already awake in the apartment, everyone’s stirring, all the Men and Women have started talking. They slam doors, burble water, jingle on the other side of the wall. The morning ship has left the slip, it cuts through the blue water, the sails fill with wind, the well-dressed travelers, laughing, exchange remarks with one another on the deck. What shores lie ahead? Mamochka is at the wheel, Mamochka is on the captain’s bridge, from the crow’s nest Mamochka looks onto the shining ripples.

“Alexei, get up! Shave, brush your teeth, wash your ears. Take a clean towel. Put the cap back on the toothpaste. Don’t forget to flush. And don’t touch anything in there, you hear me?”

All right, all right, Mamochka. How right everything you say is. How much sense everything immediately makes, how open the horizons become, how reliable a voyage with an experienced pilot. The old colored maps are unrolled, the route is drawn in with a red dotted line, all the dangers are marked with bright, clear pictures: there’s the dread lion, and on this shore —a rhinoceros; here a whale spouts a toylike fountain, and over there—is the most dangerous creature, the big-eyed, big-tailed Sea Girl, slippery, malicious, alluring.

Alexei Petrovich will wash up, put himself together; Mamochka will come and check whether he messed anything, or else the neighbors will yell again; and then it’s food time. What did Mamochka make today? To get to the bathroom you have to go through the kitchen. Old ladies grumble at the hot stove, they’re stewing poison in pots, they add the roots of terrible plants, follow Alexei Petrovich with bad looks. Mamochka! don’t let them hurt me!

Dripped a little on the floor. Oh no.

There’s already a crowd in the hallway: the Men and Women are leaving, noisily checking for their keys, coin purses.

The corner door with opaque glass is wide open; on the threshold stands that brazen Sea Girl, smirking. She winks at Alexei Petrovich; she’s all tilted; she puffs Tobacco, her Leg is stuck out, her nets laid—don’t you want to be caught, eh? But Mamochka’s to the rescue, she’s already racing like a locomotive, her red wheels pound, she whistles, out of the way!

“Shameless hussy! Get out of here, I say! Not enough for you… have to have a sick man as well!…”

“Ga-ga-ga!” The Sea Girl isn’t afraid.

Dart—and into the room. Saved. Yu-u-ck. Women—are terrifying. It isn’t clear what they’re here for, but they’re very unsettling. They walk by—smelling like they do… and they have —Legs. There are lots of them on the street, and in every house, in this one, and that one, and that one, behind every door, they’ve hidden, they’re doing something, bending, rummaging around, giggling into their fists; they know something and they won’t tell Alexei Petrovich. He’ll sit down at the table and think about Women. Once Mamochka took him with her out of town, to the beach; there were lots of them there. There was one… a wavy sort of fairy… like a little dog… Alexei Petro-vich liked her. He went up close and looked at her.