Сергей Лебедев - The Year of the Comet

“Stalin, Stalin, Stalin”—she was roaring like an airplane now, realizing the uselessness of all other words. Just that terrible hooting, owl-like, “Stalin, Stalin, Stalin,” merging with the nocturnal wind, with the scrape of a branch on the waterspout.

Her voice started to change, there were modulations now; it was the voice of a little girl in the dark woods calling for her father, who was cruelly hiding behind a tree, the voice of a nun suffering from the destruction of a sacred place, the voice of a widow many years after her husband’s death whispering his name, forgotten by her lips. Then the various voices disappeared, leaving only one, moaning and groaning, like the blade of a scythe on a sharpening stone.

“Stalin, Stalin, Stalin”—and then everything stopped, no more creaking floorboards and thumping of her stick. A few minutes later I peeked into her room—she was sleeping at the table, her head on her arms, and her head was reflected in the mirror illuminated by the moon, as if she had been trying to tell her fortune, looking into the mirror’s depths, seeking a glimpse of a beloved’s face, a shadow of her intended.

Father did what he always did in these situations: he got a book on do-it-yourself building for dacha owners, took drafting paper marked in millimeter squares, and started sketching various fences, calculating the spacing of the posts, counting the number of posts and boards, cleaning away excess pencil marks with a razor blade, and grumbling that he didn’t have a good ruler, and without one the fence might not be right.

Grandmother’s heart, which had required instant action—hurrying to buy boards, hammering, drilling, banging in the posts—settled down. She couldn’t stand Father’s measured drawing, and she made a face and told him to forget it—I’ll do it myself later, later—as if he had been moving the pencil point on the part of her herself she could not protect.

Knowing her personality, I assumed that she would start sniping at the neighbors, writing to the district attorney to demand they check where the money to buy the dacha came from, and that she’d soon drive them away with the secret help of her village friends, who could send kids to break windows or saw through the seat in the outhouse toilet.

But Grandmother Mara retreated instantly, as if she sensed her death in those new people. The fence was never built, but it existed in her imagination. For the rest of her life she never looked in the direction of the neighbors’ house or spoke of lot No. 104. Everyone thought she was expressing scorn, but I knew she was suffering. One day we were supposed to go to the store for flower seeds, but when the bus pulled up she scowled and said we’d walk—the bus was on route 104.

For some reason I was sure that the young Okunenko boy (Grandmother had learned their last name) would definitely try to befriend Ivan once he started running into him at the dachas.

But it happened faster than that. Okunenko, who had no idea Ivan existed, who never exchanged a word with any of the dacha people, nevertheless met Ivan on the first day of his arrival, when Ivan was getting out of his car to open the gate. He had predisposed Okunenko to himself, as if he were billiard ball rolling along a hustler’s table, always in the direction of the needed hole.

Ivan did not drop in to see me that day or the next; however I often saw him at the gate of the neighbor’s house and even more frequently saw Okunenko heading toward Ivan’s; sometimes they walked down the road together—a strange couple, resembling a nucleus and an electron.

I was still troubled by occasional ghosts of last summer, I still retained traces of my former adoration, my former attachment to Ivan, but I now preferred the role of aloof and independent observer. Now I could see what an invisible effect he had on me since I last met with Ivan; he had poisoned me, in the unique way to which I was susceptible by my age, with extracts of feelings and emotions that could have killed me but, once the danger was past, also accelerate maturity.

I did not seek a renewal of our friendship; I watched Okunenko hang around Ivan, giving him American cigarettes—Ivan had taken up smoking; watched them drive off in the Volga to Moscow and return happy and excited, as if they had pulled off a successful deal—and perhaps that was the case.

Coming back from the store one day, I saw Ivan heading toward our neighbors’ house. I was going to slow down and avoid him but realizing that I wasn’t expecting anything from Ivan, I kept up my original pace.

It was the first time in a year that I’d seen Ivan up close; he was a completely different person now, as if last year’s hunt for Mister, when like a hypnotist he moved me between life and death, feeding on my delight, fear, and hope, had aged him by three or four years. I alone would not have been enough for Ivan. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been able to deceive me so easily and naturally now, for he had acquired a seriousness that interfered with pretense and deceit.

“Hi,” he said, as if we had parted just yesterday. “How’s life?”

“Good,” I replied. I felt the difference in our ages, which had not seemed apparent last year.

Ivan stood still for a few seconds as if pondering which toy in his pocket to give me; then he seemed to realize something and said, “I’ll drop by one of these days. We’ll go for a walk.”

And one of those days, Ivan kept his promise. A storm was coming from the west, from Borodino and Smolensk, and whirling columns of clouds with imprisoned lightning bolts within them moved toward us. The trees shivered, sagging power lines began to whine, ripples covered the darkened ponds and moved into the reeds. We strode past the railroad station and the freight trains in the sidings. Platforms, cisterns, bunkers with grain, containers—everything seemed filled with anxiety, as if on the eve of war. With the first drops of rain we reached the old House of Culture—patches of plaster falling from the bas-reliefs, cracked columns, worn steps. Opposite, in the scrawny park, stood a propeller on a foundation—a monument to pilots killed in the war; carnations rotted in a jar with green water beneath the propeller.

“Look.” Ivan pointed to the building’s pediment.

I didn’t see anything except for the faded spackling. Something had been written there many years ago, but now there were only vague shadows and runny letters left.

“Just look,” Ivan repeated.

Rain bucketed down on the settlement, bending trees. The drops flew horizontally, harshly, the streets were boiling with water, lightning struck the rod on the boiler plant chimney, and the nearby thunder rattled windows. The rain lashed the pediment, the violet flashes of electricity outlined the shadows of the columns. The shadows fell to the left, then to the right, as if the old building were tottering on its foundation.

Suddenly I saw the inscription appearing from inside the soaked spackling, and in an oval above it, a portrait.

LONG LIVE COMRADE STALIN—the erased letters were clearly visible in the storm’s strange light; so was the profile, hair brushed back and large, predatory nose.

A profile—Stalin was not looking at you, but he could see you, he saw everyone everywhere, his gaze was not a line but a bell jar that covered the universe in all 360 degrees.

LONG LIVE COMRADE STALIN—the storm raged, tossing old crow’s nests from the trees, breaking branches of apple trees, the foamy sap meant for the apples spraying into the air. I thought that long-dead corpses would start rising at the village cemetery from beneath the pyramids with red stars, the metal and wooden crosses, the slabs of granite and labradorite, the forgotten blurred earthen mounds, and the new coffins lowered on top of the old rotten ones.