Olga Grushin - Forty Rooms

Her breath went out of her; she was winded with the sense of injustice. I notice other people, she wanted to shout, but aloud she just said, “ I am happy.”

Her mother did not seem to hear her. “The best age difference between siblings,” she went on evenly, “is one or two years, no more than three. Then they are friends growing up, and when the older generation… that is…” She stumbled, continued in haste, “I mean they will always have each other, no matter what.” Her unspoken words hung heavy in the air of the cheerful blue-and-green nursery. “And if you had a girl, think how joyful it would make your father to spoil her… Come now, Zhenechka, let’s have some of Nana’s apple pie.”

Wildly she turned to her father, hoping that he would shrug her mother’s words away, that he would say something, at least. But he said nothing at all, just stood looking after the boy, the laughter leaking out of his face until only the traces of tears remained, and the hunger in his eyes made her lower her own.

That night, after everyone else in the house was asleep—her parents in the bedroom, relinquished to them for the duration of their visit, Paul stuffed into the Procrustean snugness of the living room couch, Eugene the younger in his crib, clutching his toy hedgehog that looked like a bear, or else a bear that looked like a hedgehog, a present from Eugene the elder—she lay awake on the unfolded nursery chair, listening to her son’s even breathing. She knew that her mother was wrong, that this could not possibly be all there was, this measured, resigned wisdom of one generation succeeding another, this somnolent song of biological fulfillment in her blood; for her childhood premonitions of the darkly dazzling mysteries that underlay her existence, the dreamtime glimpses of magic that felt so terribly real, the light-headed hum of inspiration that still coursed through her veins now and then—all these things filled her with a sharp, if fleeting, sense of immeasurable depths beneath the thin veneer of her temporary suburban masquerade. Just a corner, just an instant, just a poem away lay an unimaginably rich world where gods walked alongside the chosen few; and if you ever won your way there, your reward was meaning conferred upon your daily labors and travails by the promise of immortality, by the clarity of secret luminescence.

In her first decade of life, she had understood, albeit dimly and without reasoning, that a certain kind of inner fire was required if you were ever to see the things no one else saw. In her second decade, she had learned that work and daring were necessary also, and in her third, she had added experience—of pain and joy both—to the list. But was she discovering, on the cusp of her fourth decade, that selfishness too was an essential part of this celestial equation? In the end, when all accounts were totaled, did you become great only by disregarding the happiness of those around you—was the mark of a true genius his perfect solitude, his absolute inability to consider anything beyond his art?

If so, she would have to postpone seeking entry into heaven, for she had other, human, equations to balance first.

So listen, you up there, she thought as she lay stretched on the uncomfortable chair in her boy’s room, staring at the ceiling. If anyone is up there to hear me, and if my voice is in any way special, if I have earned my right to trickle a few words into your ear, I will make a bargain with you. I will give up my life for a while longer in exchange for my father’s life. I will do my best to make him happy, I will have another child—a girl, please, if you will be so kind to note my special request—I will even give up all thought of poetry while he lives, I swear—just please make him live, make him live—

And in another, rational, adult part of herself, she knew, of course, that she was being melodramatic and laughable, that she was addressing no one—that she had no power to bargain with the gods, that there were no gods—and still she lay in the dark of the nursery, whispering fiercely. On the ceiling above her, the greenish toy stars glowed with their pale plastic light. For a while they trembled hazily, as her eyes kept spilling over with tears; then, after some time, their stored phosphorescence began to fade away; and still she stared at them, at their pale outlines, at the places where they had been, for a long sleepless stretch, mouthing promises—and unlike the magnificent stars of her childhood, these stars did make her feel small.

When they first moved in, the living room had been her least favorite place in the house. It gave her the impression of some cramped, low-ceilinged cell, like a cabin on a nighttime ship; its windows led onto the covered veranda and stayed dim even in the brightest sunlight, and the sour smell of the previous inhabitants’ feet seemed embedded in its darkened floors. She used to pass through it quickly, feeling an odd constriction in her chest, as though she were unable to take proper breaths. But as the space gradually filled with sofas, tables, and armchairs, her distaste for it just as gradually lessened, until, in their third year in the house, she found herself retreating here more and more often; the mouse-colored, well-heated room soothed her parental frustrations and domestic anxieties, made her feel grounded and calm at the end of another long day.

She had just sung Genie to sleep when she came into the living room that evening, looking forward to the ease of sofa blankets and a cup of herbal tea. A chilly draft leapt past her, ruffling the pages of the magazine in her hands—one of the windows had been cracked open, she saw, and April was trying to dance its way inside. As a rule, spring in their city lasted two or three weeks only—a cool, green breeze that swooped on light wings one clear morning, sifting drifts of petals along downtown sidewalks, turning evenings long and crisp, before departing just as lightly when the inevitable heat set in. Its flight had always saddened her in the past, but now she suddenly wished for the harsh blast of summer; the wild spring smell unsettled her, awakening an odd, teary longing for nameless, distant, unfamiliar things. She shut the window with firmness and pulled the heavy drapes closed, then, sinking into the pillows of the couch, switched on the lamp that cast a circle of seemingly solid, brown-tinted light, rearranged her belly in her lap, and, after a short hesitation, reached for the telephone.

He answered on the second ring.

“Paul Caldwell.”

“I was wondering,” she said, “whether you might be coming home soon.”

“Honey, you remember, I told you it would be a tough month. The proposal I’m writing—” She stopped listening. “Why, are you not feeling well? Is Eugene giving you trouble?”

“No, he’s just fallen asleep, and I’m fine. It’s just—” It’s just that my father is in some hospital in Moscow, and my mother keeps telling me it’s nothing, it’s only for routine observation, but I don’t know, the hospital has no direct line to the patients, so I can’t speak to him myself, and there is something about my mother’s voice I don’t like, some tightness to it. I really should go over there, you know, but I can’t leave for Russia right now, I can’t even leave for a café or a library, because I’m seven months pregnant, prescribed rest by my doctor, trapped in the suburbs with a toddler and no car, and my husband hardly ever comes home. Oh, and I don’t like to complain, but, since you ask, I will be thirty this summer, thirty, do you hear me, Lermontov was only twenty-six when he died, and Keats even younger, and Rimbaud had written all his poems by the age of twenty, and by the time Pushkin was my age, Eugene Onegin had all its best chapters, and I—I’ve written nothing for so long—