Mikhail Shishkin - Calligraphy Lesson

P.S. In the room where Mika and Roman sleep, the door is opposite the windows. On a sunny day, beams stream through, jostling, and twisting around at the keyhole, and forcing their way into the dark hallway already twisted, draw on the opposite wall a miniature window hung upside down where, if you squat, you can see past the window frame and billowing curtain to the overturned roof of the next building over and the rusty top of a September birch lowered into the blue sky, like the fox tail from the story. Catch it, Zhenya, big and small. Now I was coming back from the bathroom without turning on the light, and I heard movement behind their bedroom door. I squatted and looked into that same keyhole, and Mika was there helping him beat off.

If you dream of your mother and she’s alive, that means trouble; deceased, a change for the better.

I knew a woman I wanted to strangle, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I’d only just been taken home from the school for the blind. “Oh, you’re blind! What a disaster! For long? Have you tried treatment? And there’s nothing to be done?” And so on in that vein. “That’s terrible, never to see the light! I’d rather die than be blind!” Or, “It’s a pity you can’t see. If you could, you’d understand.” Her pity for me was quite sincere. I regret not killing her then because I don’t think they put blind people in prison. But you don’t pity me, so it’s relaxing being with you. Evgenia Dmitrievna, you can’t even imagine how grateful I am to you for that. Then, after I got home, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a cripple. You won’t believe it, but among people just like me I was happy. The legless need to live with the legless, the blind with the blind. I had friends there and it was fun. Though you won’t understand me anyway. Let alone our childish games. They tried to keep us as far away from the girls as possible, but you can’t watch everyone. Nature takes its course, so to speak. What plays a bigger role for us than seeing people are smells. Now you smell like apple soap. I won’t hide it. While you were gone I went around your room and sniffed your clothing, your dress, your underwear. So you see, at school I wanted to go home, but when I finally got home, I was suddenly unhappy. Just imagine. One day my mother was out and I ran away and got clear across town to the school myself. I don’t know what I was thinking or hoping. It was an escape plain and simple. I ran away because it was nice there—no light and no dark, no blind and no seeing. Why I’m telling you all this I don’t know. I love you, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Actually, that’s meaningless. Goodnight.

Papa, tell me something about Mama.

Zhenya, I’m tired.

Tell me.

Tell you what?

Something.

What something?

I don’t care.

Fine, tomorrow, I’m very tired.

Now.

What should I tell you about?

I don’t know. Tell me about how when you were a student you climbed through the dacha window to see mama and her father clicked his nippers.

I already did.

Tell me again.

Zhenya, let me be.

No.

Fine, then. Your mama and her parents were staying at their dacha in Udelnaya. Zhenya, what’s the point of this?

Keep going.

Her father had long nails. He called them nippers and was always clicking them. He was convinced, and tried to convince everyone, that the only help for mosquito bites was if you pressed a cross into the bite with your nail. He treated everyone. He was always trying to sink his nippers into my arm, too. After evening tea I said goodbye and headed for the station because the next day I was leaving for three months to do my stint as a medic at army training camp. Of course, I didn’t go to the station, I went for a swim past the dam. The moment it grew dark, unbeknownst to anyone, I returned. The window was open. Her father was already asleep and her mother was spending the night in town. And that was the first time. The funniest thing was we didn’t know what to do with the sheet. There wasn’t much blood, but still. And the mosquitos were relentless. We lay there slapping each other. I said, “You can say you crushed a bloodsucking mosquito.” She laughed. We never did think of anything. The dawn came, I dressed, and I was about to jump from the windowsill. She whispered, “Wait a sec!” And she held out the crumpled sheet. On the windowsill was a glass jar of water with some kind of flowers. As I was jumping, my elbow knocked it over and it exploded like a bomb. At four in the morning. I leapt over the fence and ran for the station. Not ran, flew. And it was windy, too. I unfolded the sheet, held it over my head by the corners, and hollered for the whole neighborhood to hear, like a lunatic. “Hurrah! Follow me on the attack! Hurrah!” And the sheet flew overhead.

Here you are, Zhenya dear. But I guessed that if you came today everything would be fine. What exactly would be fine, I don’t know. There’s nothing I need, after all. I was like you and I wanted everything. Now I have and need nothing. Alyosha will be here soon with his Vera. He sent a telegram. They wanted to spend longer by the sea, but they only lasted a month. It’s boring there. In the first half of the day, he wrote, they walked along the empty beach and fed the seagulls, and in the evening there was a touring midget theater. Here’s what’s funny. I was in Yalta a hundred years ago, and there were midgets then, too. But Vera keeps getting worse. She’s capricious, has hysterics, makes scenes in public, and cries at night. He’s had it with her. But what can he do? He has to be patient. She doesn’t have long, after all. This is God’s punishment for her, Zhenya dear. He punishes everyone and never lets anything slide. There’s not going to any Judgment Day there. It all happens here. Zhenya, you don’t even know how despicable she is. She cheated on Alyosha. I know everything. Alyosha was on an expedition in Central Asia catching some of his rodents. He asked Vera to come along, but she wanted no part of it, naturally. I was living with them then. Only a year had passed since the wedding. With Alyosha there she kept herself in check, but now it was bedlam. She’d be getting ready to go out and suddenly shout, “Where’s my button?” “You must have lost it somewhere, Verochka, and not noticed.” “But when I came home all the buttons were there!” she said. I reassured her. “Life is funny that way. A button comes off and you don’t notice.” She shouted, “But I’m not crazy! All the buttons were there!” Is that supposed to mean I secretly cut off her lousy button? How many years have passed, yet when I think of that button, I shake with fury. I was supposed to go to Terioki for a rest then. I got to the station, boarded the train, went to get my ticket, and suddenly—Lord, have mercy—no wallet, no ticket, and there was a neat, very straight slit in my purse. I’d been robbed in the crowd at the station. Nothing to be done for it, so I went home. In the pouring rain, with my suitcase. I finally dragged myself there. I looked and there was an unfamiliar umbrella drying in the entry. A man’s raincoat on a hook. It smelled odd, of some stranger, and there was also the smell of fresh nail polish. I listened: water splashing in the bathroom, and someone humming, a bass voice grunting. I opened the door to their bedroom, Alyosha’s bedroom, and Vera was sitting naked in front of the pier-glass with her back to me, her foot resting on the base, polishing her nails. I coughed. She looked up and saw my reflection. I thought she’d cry out, get scared, start squirming and begging my forgiveness. But as if nothing were the matter, she dipped the brush in the bottle and went to smear the nails on her other foot. I said, “Why so quiet, Vera? Say something.” I heard a splash from the bathroom. She replied, “What am I supposed to say?” “What do you mean?” I said. “I just left for the station and here you are…” She laughed. She was sitting with legs splayed, her big toenail red and the rest still bare. “Lord, who on earth are you?” She laughed. “Who? What makes you better than me?” I said, “What about Alyosha?” “What about Alyosha? This doesn’t change anything. What am I supposed to do, jump out the window? If you tell him, he won’t believe you anyway. Leave and don’t come back until tonight.” So I left. I realized right away who it was in the bathroom, Zhenya. But I won’t tell you. Why should I?