Tatyana Tolstaya - White Walls - Collected Stories

Korobeinikov savors one last cigarette: he taps it against the table; he kneads the hollow cardboard tip, lights a match; the pale flame illuminates his yellowish face, the fat lenses of his glasses, a bulging forehead with locks of thick black hair. Korobeinikov has extraordinary hair: the man is nearly sixty years old, and look what a mane he’s got! Everyone else already has bald spots of various shapes, except for the young people, of course. Olga Mikhailovna’s husband, glancing at Korobeinikov, runs his hand over his own balding head with chagrin—oh well, to each his own. At least I don’t have an ulcer.

But now it’s dark outside the window—in August it gets dark early—and time for Korobeinikov to go. He’s expected for supper at the sanatorium: his piece of baked cheese pie with its beggarly puddle of sour cream has already grown cold, and the tea urn, too, and the lights have been turned out. He’ll sit in the half-empty cafeteria, deep in thought, brushing crumbs off the tablecloth, staring at his shaggy reflection in the black win-dowpanes, listening closely to the mustard-hot pain somewhere inside him—to the pain that awakens with the darkness and drones, drones like a distant transformer.

Dolores—that is, Olga Mikhailovna—walks Korobeinikov out to the porch, and everyone else stands up as well, nodding and shaking his hand: It’s not too cold for you? Maybe you should take a jacket? No? Are you sure now? He will carefully step down from the porch, his glasses glinting, he’ll turn on a pocket flashlight, the bright circle will play at his feet, catching a bit of the green grass, the fence spikes, the trampled path, the startled, white tree trunks. Korobeinikov directs the beam to the skies, but the weak light scatters and the skies remain just as dark as ever; only the top branches and the crows’ nests are lit for a moment. Playful, he turns the flashlight back toward the porch, and then nothing can be seen in the night but a white star where Korobeinikov had been standing.

At some point Olga Mikhailovna finds out that Dmitry Ilich has also rented a little dacha in their village—Dmitry Ilich, whom she knew slightly in the city; she’d run into him at friends’ houses, and they even kind of took to one another. Olga Mikhailovna thinks it’s only natural that people like her; she’s considered pretty, and from Dmitry Ilich’s viewpoint she’s still quite young. Dmitry Ilich is an interesting man, too: he’s a sculptor, and he knows tons of stories and amazing incidents, like for instance how once they unveiled a monument and it was headless! Well, and stuff like that. Dmitry Ilich limps, he walks with a stick, and it suits him. He says things like “No, I’m not Byron, I’m something else,” but somehow it ends up that he is sort of Byron, after all—he’s lame, he writes a little poetry, and he was in Greece for a day and a half on a cruise. He’s seen Europe, and this automatically commands respect. He says, “Italy—huh, nothing special. But Greece, now— Greece is something,” and though everyone understands that Italy is probably not exactly nothing special, he’s been there and they haven’t, so it’s hard to argue. Well, he says a lot of other things—he’s had plenty of adventures in his time. He was at the front for a speck, and in the camps—he “went camping” in Siberia for two years, as he puts it, not for any particular reason, naturally—but he doesn’t hold a grudge, he believes in destiny and has a sense of humor. So when Olga Mikhailovna runs into him in the village, she says, “Drop by and see us some evening,” and he thanks her and says, “I will be sure to limp by.” He’s really a gorgeous man—he plays the bohemian, of course, but so what?—he has hair down to his shoulders, streaked with gray, a slightly pockmarked face, yellow hawk eyes, and he wears a smock. He says to Olga Mikhailovna, “I must sculpt you.”

So he actually does come to see them one evening, and they slice a pound cake and put the kettle on. Dmitry Ilich tells them about his cruise, and about how one old guy in their group blew all his foreign currency the first day out, and when they were already on their way home through Turkey he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t bought anything for his wife, so then he raced down to the Turkish market and traded his hearing aid—which he passed off as a radio—for a necklace. And he brought his old lady this necklace. Everyone’s laughing, including Olga Mikhailovna’s husband, and Olga Mikhailovna looks out the window and says, “Here comes Korobeinikov, he’s got a mushroom. Oh, he’s such a dear, and he tells the most amusing stories—about this woman named Dolores and all!”

Dmitry Ilich says, “Korobeinikov! Which Korobeinikov? Could it really be the same Korobeinikov?” And he doesn’t explain what he means. Olga Mikhailovna is intrigued, of course, and looks to and fro, and in comes Korobeinikov with his mushroom and his stories, sweet and affable as ever—he likes it here, and it’s a nice day, and the air is good, and the woods are lovely, and the people are nice, and he’d be happy to stay forever.

The guests are introduced to each other, everybody has tea, the evening chitchat begins. Korobeinikov, it must be said, is in top form, and Olga Mikhailovna is simply thrilled, but Dmitry Ilich is watching sort of intently and there’s some thought glimmering in his yellow eyes. Olga Mikhailovna is dying of curiosity—what did he mean?—her eyes shine, and everyone finds her charming. As always, for that matter.

“Hmm. Well, what do you know?” says Dmitry Ilich, after the ulcer patient, playing with his flashlight, has disappeared into the grove. “Who would have thought?”

“Well, what? What is it?”

“No, who would have thought?” And he drums his fingers on the table. Then he lays out everything he knows about this Korobeinikov. They were in school together, as it happens. In different classes. Korobeinikov, of course, has forgotten Dmitry Ilich—well, it’s been forty years now, that’s only natural. But Dmitry Ilich hasn’t forgotten, no sir, because at one time this Korobeinikov pulled a really dirty trick on him! You see, in his youth Dmitry Ilich used to write poetry, a sin he still commits even now. They were bad poems, he knows that—nothing that would’ve made a name for him, just little exercises in the fair art of letters, you know, for the soul. That’s not the point. But, as it happened, when Dmitry Ilich had his little legal mishap and went camping for two years, the manuscripts of these immature poems of his ended up in this Korobeinikov’s hands. And the fellow published them under his own name. So, that’s the story. Fate, of course, sorted everything out: Dmitry Ilich was actually glad that these poems had appeared under someone else’s name; nowadays he’d be ashamed to show such rubbish to a dog; he doesn’t need that kind of fame. And it didn’t bring Korobeinikov any happiness: he got neither praise nor abuse for his reward; nothing came of it. Korobeinikov never did make it as an artist, either: he changed professions, and now he does some kind of technical work, it seems. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

“How do you like that,” says Olga Mikhailovna.

“How do you like that,” says her husband. “What a bastard!”

“Now then, I wouldn’t call him a bastard,” said Dmitry Ilich, softening. “At that time people saw things differently. Who could have known that I would come back? And this way my humble verse didn’t perish—at least it saw the light of day. Maybe he was even prompted by noble motives.”

“But he could have apologized after your return,” says Olga Mikhailovna. “That’s what I would have done, at any rate.”

“Those were different times, my child,” Dmitry Ilich explains indulgently. Olga Mikhailovna likes it when he calls her a child. At forty, it’s pleasant. “Different times. And how would he have known that I came back? I didn’t report to him. We weren’t even really acquainted. God will forgive him, and I already have. Right here and now I’ve forgiven him.”