Mikhail Shishkin - Calligraphy Lesson

But quite a few years have passed and you’re still alone, Evgeny Alexandrovich.

How can I explain it, Nastasya Filippovna? One day I had to stay late at work. I was writing up a report. I think it was about some young man who’d killed the mother of his buddy, who was in the army at the time. They tracked the youth down the same day, and he didn’t deny it but kept insisting she’d gotten him drunk and lured him on. A photograph was attached to the case materials—a naked body on the floor, fat and misshapen. There are pictures like that in nearly every file. It’s nothing unusual. By the time I left, it was dark outside, a cold autumn evening, and I started home. Where else could I go? When Kolya still lived at home, I’d always tried to get back as early as I could to feed him, check his homework, play a game. We would cut out little paper men, draw faces on them, and invent all kinds of stories. Kolya had an amazing imagination. He would come up with great yarns and he was always rescuing everyone. Kolya would talk about himself nonstop: about the other kids, his teachers, his grades, all his friendships and arguments. But now I had to force myself to go home to an empty house. So that day, knowing I faced another endless, pointless evening, I took the longest possible route home, then made another detour, and walked like that for an hour, maybe two—aimlessly, I thought—and suddenly found myself outside your house. There was no one outside and the streetlights were dark. I opened the gate and walked in. It was dark in the garden. The only light came from the windows. I got very close. The undrawn curtain revealed nearly half the room. No one was there. Suddenly you walked in and looked out the window, straight at me. That scared me and made me want to hide behind a tree, but I froze, transfixed. You were standing so close you couldn’t have not seen me, but you didn’t even flinch. You turned to one side, then the other, ran your palms over your hips, looking at your reflection, fixed your hair, turned away, and walked through the room and around the table. You were talking to yourself. I couldn’t hear through the double window. I could just see your lips moving. Suddenly your husband loomed up. He’d been lying on the sofa the whole time, and now he stood up, in his robe, disheveled, with mussed hair and a tired, sleepy face. He must have taken a nap right after work. He put his arms around you, lay his head on your shoulder, and shut his eyes. Then the children were brought in, to say goodnight probably, because they were wearing their nightshirts and were all pink under the lampshade. You made a cross over your daughter and son and kissed them on the forehead. The little girl kept holding out a book to you, probably trying to talk you into reading to her before bed. First you shook your head and your face was stern, but your little girl begged you so, so you smiled and sat down next to her in the armchair. Your child wiggled for a long time getting comfortable and then fell still with her little mouth open, on a flight of fancy to a land of trolls, or naughty ducks, or enchanted frogs, places you and I can never be. Meanwhile your spouse started a game of blind man’s buff with your son, put a coin in his eye to look like a monocle, and paddling with his arms, chased the little boy around the room. The child was in such ecstasy that his cries, shrieks, and laughter splashed out the window and scattered over the stiff, chilly garden. You tried to calm them both down a few times and spoke sternly, probably about how the children shouldn’t get so worked up before bedtime, or words to that effect, but even you couldn’t help laughing and gave first one and then the other a playful smack with your little book. The coin popped out and your husband got down on his hands and knees to reach under the chair for it, whereupon the boy jumped on his neck and the girl on her papa’s back. You were all laughing hard. Finally, the children were taken off to bed. Your spouse lit up and sat down with the newspaper under a lamp in a corner of the sofa. You settled in beside him with a fat book. Then you got up, brought a pillow over, plumped it up at the other end of the sofa, and lay down, wrapping your legs in a big warm throw. You read like that for a long time, with your legs draped across his knees. Once you looked into the corner together—up. It was the clock chiming. Occasionally he would read you something out loud, some funny item. He would laugh and shake his head while he read, but you would just smile faintly, not even looking up, you were so engrossed in your book. Then he folded the paper, yawned, said something to you, you just nodded, and he went out. You kept reading, first sitting with your legs curled underneath you, then lying on your back. From time to time you would take a pin out of your hair and scratch your head. I didn’t notice how cold it was, that I was chilled through, but I just couldn’t leave. I kept standing there watching you. At one point you stood up and took a box of candy from the sideboard, balanced it on your knees, and ate piece after piece, wadding each wrapper up in a ball and flicking it away. Suddenly, from upstairs, came a child’s cry. You jumped up, dropped your book on the table, and rushed out of the room looking frightened. No one was there for a long time. Then your husband appeared for a moment and the light went out. But I kept standing there. I was afraid to leave.

Oh, you naughty boy! Have you no shame? Gray hair, and you behave like a little boy. It’s true, my husband is always reading things out loud from the newspapers. For instance, recently there was one story about three men convicted of raping a girl, a teenager. Not only that, but imagine, they were all reputable men and had families and children. In short, you never would have thought something like that about them. Understandably, they were angry and indignant, and they hired the best lawyers. They brought charges against someone, saying it was all a frame-up. The girl was the daughter of their mutual acquaintances, though, and her parents believed everything she said and were furious at the base and vile things their good friends had done. During the inquiry and trial the girl told stories of such degenerate acts committed against her that no one ever doubted the veracity of her testimony. Such horrors simply could not have entered a child’s mind. In short, they were convicted, but their lawyers kept active, another inquiry was scheduled, and the upshot was that the three were innocent, that the girl was sick, that she had an erotically based psychological deviance and had dreamed this all up and believed her own fantasies. The convicted men were released, of course. One can only imagine the joy in their unfortunate families. And they placed the girl in a special clinic to teach this horrible girl not to defame honest people. After all was said and done, though, they found details in her initial statements that simply could not have been invented: an unusual birthmark in a most intimate place and something else like that. Other testimony and evidence were found as well. Finally, one of them confessed and all three were imprisoned again, this time for good. But meanwhile, what was most interesting was they didn’t release the girl, because she really was abnormal and attacked everyone, men and women alike. In short, a fine lot all. But you just don’t know my husband really. He’s a marvelous man and I love him very much. This is a man worthy of every respect. He loves me and our children very much. He’s always coming up with surprises, For instance, he writes either me or himself letters and mails them, and then we open them together and he watches me—after all, he only does it to bring me pleasure—and I go into ecstasies over his silly scribbles, to make him feel good. I rushed headlong into marriage. This very young fool fell head over heels in love with a grown man just because he visited our house occasionally and never said a word. Now I realize my primitive curiosity fed my fantasy—so that I couldn’t go on living without this clam. Later, after the wedding, I had an epiphany. It was like I’d regained my senses. I was horrified at what I’d done, but our son showed up so I resigned myself. This man is a marvelous husband, and I understand intellectually that I should be grateful to him, but it’s unbearable. The strange, crazy ways he has of eating disgust me. He always has his second course first and then his soup. He likes to crumble bread into his milk because his mama made him a mush like that when he was little, and he shovels that mess, that awful, swelling swill, into both cheeks. I’m always finding his socks in the most incredible places, and when he loses something, it’s my fault. He can go weeks without a bath and his dirty hair smells awful, but before leaving for work he spends fifteen minutes putting on cologne, to mask the smell. When he thrusts himself on me, especially at night, I try to imagine it’s someone else instead of him. Don’t get the wrong idea. I have no thought of cheating on him; I would despise myself afterward. If I fell in love with someone else, I would fight the feeling in any case. Self-respect is more important than pleasure. I have children and a home and I can’t imagine a different life for myself, although in my mind I’m cheating on him constantly—disgusting, horrible, filthy thoughts, and I try to drive them out, but I can’t. And that’s even worse than cheating on him for real. Sometimes I scare myself. And that goes not just for my husband but for the thoughts that overwhelm me in general. It’s become impossible. When I was nursing our first child, I was so tired, I was in a state of such nervous agitation over his endless illnesses and my chronic lack of sleep, I was so tormented by his screaming and crying, that one day I had a nervous breakdown, a moment of insanity. In the middle of the night the boy started screaming again and I jumped up, exhausted, and suddenly such hatred bubbled up inside me, such rage, such fury, that I was ready to kill him. I actually snatched the child from his crib—I remember I was suddenly struck by the idea of throwing him off the balcony. This horrified me so that things suddenly felt crazy after all, I was a second away from the irrevocable. After that night, my milk dried up. Listen to me, because it would never occur to a mother to kill her own child!