Olga Grushin - Forty Rooms

The telephone shrilled in the hush of my dorm room, jolting me out of cramped armchair sleep; I had dozed off while waiting. I let it ring another time before lifting the receiver, willing my heart to slow from a gallop to a canter, then said “Allo” with all the brightness I could muster. Lisa’s voice burst into my ear mid-laugh. She was just calling to tell me she would be spending the night at Sam’s, but oh, the funniest thing had happened to her this morning in the cafeteria, could I imagine—

“Lisa,” I interrupted, “you know I can’t tie up the line right now.”

“Oops, it’s Sunday, I forgot.” She hung up before she had finished speaking.

Carefully putting the receiver down on its cradle, I sank back into the armchair, checked the clock. It had been an hour already. Sometimes they were able to get through right away, but it often took two or three hours, longer on occasion. Too anxious to read, I thought of smoking a joint, then decided against it: I wanted my head to be clear. Music drifted through the half-open window—Constantine was readying for another party. The March breeze made the lowered shade rattle lightly against the pane.

I settled back for another stretch of expectant silence.

Every Sunday, as I waited by the telephone, I could picture them with that rare clarity for which I treasured these weekly vigils—my father at his typewriter, working with only half his usual absorption, ready to pick up the second line at a moment’s notice, my mother perched on a stool in the corridor, dialing, hearing the hateful busy signal, dialing again, hearing the busy signal, dialing again, her lips pressed taut with concentration, willing into being the operator’s curt response. Our conversations themselves were disappointing, five minutes’ worth of forced cheer shouted over static; but the hours of anticipation allowed me to convince myself that my home truly existed, that my childhood had been real—that it had not all been an invention, a fairy tale I told myself whenever I felt lonely, a heartrending song of stars and destinies, dissipating in the harsh light of days and the neon glare of nights conducted with the dry precision of a foreign language.

Sitting immobile for so long had made me stiff. I stretched, yawned, closed my eyes; when I opened them an instant later, the world had shifted: the familiar earthy smell lingered in the air—perhaps I had rolled that joint after all—and the room was flooded with silence and darkness. The silence had a different quality to it, a humming thrill of unreality, and the darkness was deepest in the armchair across from mine.

“So,” he said matter-of-factly, “you’ve decided to break it to them at last. They won’t be pleased, you know. No, don’t turn it on, or you may just see a dragon instead of a handsome youth.”

“Aren’t you getting your myths mixed up? I’m hardly Psyche, and you’re too old to be Cupid.” Still, I moved my hand away from the lamp. “In any case, I’m not worried, I know they’ll understand. I’ve sent them some of my poems.”

“Yes,” he said. “Your On the Other Side cycle. It wouldn’t have been my first choice—it’s more Dionysus than Apollo, too much raw feeling, not enough thought. And that ditty about a nun sleeping with the devil, that’s painfully obvious, really, and as close to pornography as is acceptable in civilized society. Well. You’ve practiced your arguments, I assume?”

“I’m hoping my poetry alone will be enough,” I said, a bit dryly.

“But if it isn’t?”

“Then I will tell them that going home is a predictable thing to do, and someone once taught me not to take the path of least resistance.” I paused for the sound of acknowledgment, but the darkness lay still around me. “Fine. I will tell them that I’ll be twenty-two in just a few months, but I have yet to start living. I’ve spent my entire existence until now sheltered under the parental roof, in library cubicles and dorm rooms, and my future is all mapped out for me as well: my old Moscow routine waiting to close in upon me, a short interlude of graduate school followed by a desk job in some dusty institute, a marriage to someone like Vasily, then children, then middle age, then death. It’s like one giant board of tic-tac-toe, spanning years and years, and as life crosses off one square, I’m expected to obediently put my O down in the next logical place, knowing all the while that the game can’t be won. But somewhere out there—somewhere out there are street carnivals and mountain peaks and sunlit squares, and I just want to—to get off the board for a while.”

“But what exactly will you do, my dear?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter? Maybe move to New York. Or New Orleans. Or San Francisco. Rent a studio. Wait tables in some smoky den. Learn how to mix mean cocktails and play the guitar. Master poker. Take up karate. Work at an art gallery or a post office. Get a job as a conductor on a train between the coasts. Or a backup dancer. Or a window washer. Anything. Everything. I’ve never even been anywhere. I want to throw myself into adventures. Plunge into the twentieth century before it runs out, so I can write about it in the fullness of experience. Because no one can discover anything new while staying within four walls of a bookworm’s cell, never venturing out to taste joy or pain. Art is all about stretching the limits of being human, is it not? It can’t be born of a small, predictable life.”

A night breeze swept into the room, and the shade beat a fluttering rhythm against the windowpane. I peered into the shadows. “Are you still there? Hello?”

“I wish,” he said, and I could hear him stifling a yawn, “I wish you hadn’t fallen into the trap that has claimed so many others. An artist doesn’t need to lead a life of distraction in order to create. In fact, if you are ever to prove worthy of a myth, you must devote all your time to your calling and leave the manufacturing of adventures to your future biographers. For you must remember: Limits are best stretched by going inward, not outward; pain will find you no matter how cramped the cell you hide in; and joy—joy is always only a poem away. And there are no such things as small lives, there are only small people.”

I felt a sudden flare of irritation at the smooth readiness of his maxims, at his seeming inability to understand anything about real choices in a real life.

“Noble callings, divine standards, creation with a capital C… All you ever do is talk in absolutes and abstractions.” I spoke sharply. “Don’t they say God is in the details? I want—no, I need—to experience the details , don’t you understand—the particular, gritty, wonderful details of life out there. The smell of dew and garbage trucks at dawn. The bracing taste of bitter coffee at the chipped counter of a roadside diner. The wild thrill of jazz spilling out of a basement window into a still, dark alley. These are the kinds of things I want to pin down in my poems. Things and feelings that will be unique to the here and now. Things and feelings that will be unique to me in the here and now.”

All at once conscious of shouting, I stopped. The hush in the drafty room grew hollow like the inside of a tolling bell.

When he spoke, the indifference of his drawl was a punch to the stomach.

“Sometimes, my dear, I forget what a child you still are. Oh well. Take care, while out browsing, that you don’t get lost in the stacks. I will be leaving you now.”