Ольга Славникова - The Man Who Couldn't Die

As a rule, Klumba arrived morose and cleared out even more so: her black bag clattered its bottom metal and her nose burned like a lump of coal. But if the benefits rep was in a good mood for any reason, the danger for the next time multiplied. For some reason, raised spirits in her always found expression in loud, abusive tirades against the authorities, which neither respected nor pitied unfortunate old people in the least, forcing them to starve on their miserable crumbs. This heat was stoked by the fact that Klumba was, as a woman and a citizen, a supporter of Valery Petrovich Apofeozov. When she saw his figure at the center of things, the intertwining of national and local branches of authority created an unexpected drawing rich in imagined profiles and—like in magazine picture puzzles—hidden pirates, so much so that the enthusiastic Klumba really did have something to talk about. For her, Valery Apofeozov was not merely a goal but also a means for hating everyone else, especially Muscovites: his existence seemed to give Klumba many additional rights. The voice of a visitor, younger than her by ten or fifteen years, compelled her to rattle and clatter teacups in the kitchen; indeed, the voice itself rattled, borne off toward the sick man’s room on pointy red kitten heels. Breaking off in the middle of a word and convinced that “grandpa” was watching (Alexei Afanasievich’s gaze became perfectly intelligent), Klumba continued without commas from where she’d left off—after which, leaving the door flung open, she could be heard throughout the apartment for a good fifteen minutes. Nina Alexandrovna could only hope that the paralyzed man would take the berated politicians for superintendents or repairmen who had become characters in that humor magazine Crocodile .

No one knew what season it was in the sick man’s room. In outside time, as has been mentioned, it was autumn. Nina Alexandrovna’s shoes had worn thin and now soaked through in the lightest rain, turning her wet mesh stockings purple. In the evenings she sometimes noticed the same kinds of stains, only black, on her daughter’s feet when she wearily pulled off her wet Italian boots, which had softened to a semblance of stewed prunes—though they’d been bought quite recently. A cold wind had come up very early, in the first few days of September, and started rinsing the earth; the grass, not yellow as yet, became pickle-juice green, and street vendors covered their goods with moisture-dotted clear plastic. The feet of mother and daughter were defenseless against the inclement weather. No matter which pair of shoes, even their winter boots, deep barefoot imprints formed inside. The September pension was marked by the purchase of shared (primarily for Marina, of course) light boots. Waiting for Klumba’s appearance on the twentieth, Nina Alexandrovna sensed a lethargy, a minty numbing, a fist under her left shoulder blade that steadily turned her toward uneasy thoughts about her daughter’s illnesses.

Klumba showed up looking very businesslike, her makeup damp as if it had been affixed to her focused face with spit, and wearing a soggy wool suit that smelled of sheep. Having glanced as usual into the pale washed room with the paralyzed man in the bluish bed and then returned to the kitchen with her list at the ready, she noticed in passing that “for some reason the grandpa in the bed had a rope.” After counting out the long-awaited money and seeing out her visitor, who spent a long time tucking her smashed curls into her sack-deep velour beret, Nina Alexandrovna hurried to the bedroom, overcome by a strange unease. Nothing special: just the belt from her green robe, which had become a rag long ago. Evidently it had been lying around somewhere and landed on Alexei Afanasievich’s blanket, dragged in by something during housecleaning. Before, too, Nina Alexandrovna had had occasion to leave various things in the paralyzed man’s bed—to say nothing of the fact that Alexei Afanasievich always had a few of his toys there with him: a couple of small dolls and a stuffed rabbit. Nina Alexandrovna had learned long ago, by trial and error, that most ordinary objects were too small or too flat for her husband’s hand and required some dexterity. If he was to pick them up with his mitten-hand, they had to be mainly china figurines: the German beauties and shepherdesses with little flowerlike faces he’d brought back as trophies. Alexei Afanasievich dropped one of them, and it broke into four pieces, and the head, its little cheeks gleaming, rolled under the chair. For some reason, it upset Nina Alexandrovna that when her husband stretched an empty hand out of its imprisonment, a hand that was like a prosthesis compared with his entire dormant body, he could master not real things but just likenesses, the little substitute figures the outside world derisively slipped him, avoiding contact. She took the hint, though. She replaced the china with plastic dolls that Alexei Afanasievich raked up, like a cannibal, and dragged under the blanket headfirst until the smiling little person slipped from his awkward, weakened grasp. Also good were toy rubber whistles that sometimes, in his claw, emitted a raspy, half-stifled squeak, announcing the paralyzed man’s ultimate victory over the inaccessible matter that surrounded him. Today Nina Alexandrovna had planned to buy Alexei Afanasievich something new and as amusing and sweet as possible: the little Chinese dinosaur with the apron-like flannel belly she’d seen the month before in the little girls’ department at Children’s World. Tucking in the sick man’s blanket (his left hand, placed on top, traced out something like a welcoming gesture, although his brain was clouded), Nina Alexandrovna quickly gathered her things, took a little money, slipped her feet into her now dry, round-toed shoes, and left.

Meanwhile, the sun had peeked out, and the puddles on the wet blue asphalt were like cleanly washed windows. Next to the underground passage, old grannies were selling their last oily-soft brown cap boletus mushrooms bruised from fingers and pine needles, sturdy little white-bellied cucumbers, and cheap, stiff asters that smelled like a pharmacy. A fair-haired, bent-over bicyclist rode by all shiny, sending his wheels rippling through the little puddles, and the sun spilled all over him, including his spokes and whooshing glass windshield. Hurrying, stepping on her buckling soles as if she were pressing on unresponsive pedals, Nina Alexandrovna headed to Children’s World, outside of which, to her bitter joy, there were always several strollers filled with bouncing babies all asleep. This time, next to the polished porch, there was only one stroller, covered in brown checked fabric like a rolling suitcase—and exactly the same stroller, only empty and lined in oilcloth, was displayed in the window, under rattles hung on invisible silks, as if it were a Garden of Eden filled with colorful plastic birds and fruits. Unable to resist the temptation to peek, Nina Alexandrovna stealthily leaned over the baby’s eyebrowless face, as soft as clabbered milk, where its little closed eyes were like flat wrinkles—at which point a squat young mama in gilt eyeglasses ran down the front steps, kicking at and scaring away her own purchases. Nina Alexandrovna stepped back and apologized, and the mama, without saying a word, tilted the stroller back on its wheels, turned it and let it bang down, and wound off decisively through water and fallen leaves.

Upset, Nina Alexandrovna quietly entered the store. The little girls’ department was partitioned off by a rope strung with crude pieces of paper: scribbled on one in large faint purple marker letters was “Inventory.” In the little boys’ department, school uniforms in the same official navy blue as work records hung single file. There was also a gentlemanly little white jacket hanging separately at the unthinkable price of fourteen hundred rubles, and the toys were represented by silvery tanks with rasping working motors, a large array of cold steel and firearms, and some robot soldiers with matching plastic weapons as miniature as Christmas tree lights in individual square boxes. Nina Alexandrovna was horrified as usual by the ever-present thought that she might suddenly lose her mind and bring Alexei Afanasievich a toy tank or submachine gun, or one of the blunt little armored cars possibly made from repurposed real armor and painted authentic army green.