Tatyana Tolstaya - The Slynx

Second, it's good because if you came visiting, and the guests didn't get along-say you argue with the Golubchik who invited you, or fight, or spit at someone, or they spit at you, or something else-well, you think, at least I had a drink, it wasn't a complete waste.

But Benedikt hadn't done his own housekeeping for a long time, he didn't have his own mead, and the Kudeyarovs, well, as soon as you started making some… no, better not to have anyone asking questions. So he came empty-handed. And left the hook in the mud room. He pulled up a stool and sat down next to the bed, put an expression of sympathy on his face: he cocked his eyebrows up, turned his mouth down. No smile.

"How are you?" said Varvara in a weak voice. "I heard that you married. Congratulations. A wonderful event."

"Yes, a real mesalliance," Benedikt bragged.

"How lovely it must be… I always dreamed… Tell me… tell me something moving and exciting."

"Hmm. Oh, they announced that we're having another leap year."

Varvara Lukinishna burst into tears. Well, no doubt about it, nothing happy in that news.

Benedikt shifted his weight and cleared his throat, not knowing what else to say. The book was hidden somewhere. Under the bed? He stretched out his leg, real casual, stuck it under the bed and felt around with his foot. There seemed to be a box.

"You know, you read in books: fleur d'orange, fate… flowers pinned at the waist, filigree lace…"

"Yep, they all start with the letter Fert," said Benedikt. "With Fert I noticed you can hardly ever make any sense of the words." Through his felt boots it was hard to feel what kind of box it was and where the top was. There you go: without a hook you might as well be missing your hands.

Varvara Lukinishna's one eye filled with tears.

"… the altar… the choir… the incense… dearly beloved… the veil… the garter…"

"Just what I said, can't make sense of it!"

Benedikt stuck his second leg under the bed, pulled his boot down on his heel, and pulled his foot out. The foot wrapping got stuck-it must have been poorly wound. No, better to take off both boots. But how hard it was with no hands! What now? To take the first boot off, you have hold down the heel with the second, but to take the second one off, you have to press it down with the first one. But if you've gone and taken off the first one, then it will be off, won't it? How are you supposed to hold the other one? Now there's a scientific question they don't answer in books. And if you try to learn by watching nature, then you have to move your legs like a fly-quick quick rub them against each other. Then the legs get kind of mixed up, you can't tell which is first and which is second: but all of a sudden the boots fly off.

"… and my youth flew by without love!" Varvara Lukinishna cried.

"Yes, yes!" agreed Benedikt. Now he had to unwind the foot wrappings: they got in the way.

"Take my hand, dear friend!"

Benedikt guessed more or less where Varvara Lukinishna's hand must be, took it, and held it. Now his hands were occupied, there was nothing to help his feet. That meant he had to keep turning his foot around and around, so the wrapping would unwind, and had to hold it to one side with his second foot. You could get downright bushed and work up a real sweat that way.

"Don't tremble so, my friend! It's too late! Fate did not deign to let our paths cross!…"

"Yes, yes, that's true. I noticed that myself."

A bare foot is so much more agile than a foot in a shoe! Almost like it had eyes on the soles! There's the wall of the box, fuzzy, but with no splinters: birch doesn't splinter, it's not like pulpwood. And not every bark works for a box: thin bark is used more for letters, and thick bark, that's for baskets: we know our carpentry. Here's the top. Now he had to raise the top with his toes…

"You're equally distraught? Dear heart! Could it be… is it true?…"

Benedikt grabbed Varvara Lukinishna's hand, or whatever it was, even harder, for support. He spread his toes, stretched out his big toe, and flipped the top. Aha! Got it!

Suddenly his eyes squeezed shut, he jerked upward and then fell, grabbing on to something. A damned cramp! He forgot that feet don't work like hands, that's for sure!!!

It passed. Whew!

… Varvara Lukinishna lay there without moving, her eye open, staring at the ceiling. Benedikt was taken aback and looked closely. What was going on? His elbow had kind of pressed down on her somewhere… he couldn't figure out where. Did he bump her or something?

He sat and waited. "Hey," he called.

She didn't answer. She wasn't dead, was she?… Ay, she was dead. Jeez! What from? It was kind of unpleasant… Dying sure wasn't fun, not like playing dead.

He sat on the stool, his head lowered. This was bad. They had worked together. He took off his hat. She wasn't an old woman, she could have gone on living and living. Copying books. Planting turnips.

She didn't really have any relatives-who was going to bury her? And how? Our way, or like the Oldeners do it?

Mother was buried the Oldeners' way. Stretched out. If it was done our way, then you had to gut the corpse, bend the knees, tie the arms and legs together, make clay figures, and put them in the grave. Benedikt had never done this himself, people who like to do that sort of thing always came out of the woodwork and he only stood to the side, watching.

"Teterya!" he yelled out the door. "Come here."

The Degenerator ran willingly into the izba: it was warm inside.

"Teterya… This woman died. A co-worker… I came to visit a co-worker and she just up and died right this minute. What needs to be done? Huh?…"

"OK," said Teterya in a rush. "You have to put her hands on her chest in a cross… like that… Not that way!… Where is her chest?… Christ, who the hell knows… it should be lower than the head… Anyway, the arms crossed, an icon in the hands, of course. Close the eyes… Where are her eyes?… Oh, here's one! Spartak vs. Armenia, one to zero. Tie the jaw; where's her jaw! Where's… oh, forget it; just let her lie there like that. You, you're supposed to call people together, rustle up a lot of grub, bliny and stuff, and make sure there's a shitload of booze."

"All right, you can go, I know what to do from here."

"Beet and potato salad, the more the better! The red stuff, you know, with onion! Ah!"

"Out!" Benedikt screamed.

… He crossed her arms, if they were in fact her arms, closed her eye… Shouldn't he put a stone on it? But where could you find a rock in winter! Now. An icon? That's what they draw on birch bark? An idol?

A bluish mouse-oil candle trembled on the table; just moments ago Varvara lit that candle. He opened the stove damper, that's where the sticks were: the fire jumped back and forth, dancing. Varvara had just put the sticks in the stove. She stoked the fire-and now it was burning in the emptiness. She wasn't there anymore. He threw in a few more pieces so that the fire hummed and there'd be more light in the izba.

On the table there was a pile of birch sheets, a writing stick, and an ink pot: she boiled her own rusht for ink, sharpened her own sticks, she liked for everything to be orderly… Homemade was always better than official, she used to say. Come over for some soup, she used to say. How can you compare official soup to homemade? He didn't come. He was afraid of her cock's combs…

Oh, the moment, oh, the bitter fight.

Let the beer brew with the malt.

Life could have been pure flight,

But rain and cold streamed from the heavens' vault.

Benedikt started to cry. The tears burned his eyes, backed up quickly and overflowed the brim, pouring down into his beard. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. She was kind. She always gave you her own ink if yours ran out. She explained what words meant. A steed, she said, is not a mouse-truer words were never spoken. An idol in her hands…