by Maxim Osipov
“A mosque isn’t the be-all and end-all,” Ruhshona interrupts. “That isn’t where I would start.”
Why on earth not?
“Trust me, Roxanochka, I know these things better. We’ll build a mosque,” Ksenia asserts, “right in the center of town. And people will flock to it—we get so many of those Asiatics coming here . . .”
There is a plot of land; there is a plan. Discussing building projects feels normal, easy. They may not have any designs yet, but they’ll get it done. There will be a mosque. There will be somewhere for Roxana to pray when she gets out. Ksenia suddenly stops short—as though throughout all of these conversations she had forgotten their current situation.
“But will you come back?” Her whole life hangs on the answer to this question. “Live with me—on equal terms this time. I’m getting old, why should I have a house like that all to myself?”
Ruhshona shrugs: How could she ever come back here, after what happened today? No matter how the investigation and the trial end, she’ll still be thrown out, deported.
No, no, Ksenia will adopt her. Roxana will be her little girl, her daughter.
“Me? An adult? Nonsense. Besides, my mother’s still alive.”
All they need is a competent lawyer. Ksenia repeats: If Roxana just comes back to her, she’ll give her everything. And she’ll get her a lawyer—the very best. Just come back!
Does Ruhshona really need Ksenia’s everything? For what seems like the first time in this conversation, Ruhshona takes a moment to think. Perhaps her purpose in life is to help unhappy middle-aged women discover the true faith, the one God—and to do it there, where she will soon be sent. That’s it—that’s why today’s events had to happen! Ruhshona can already see the columns of women—sinful, lost women, Russian and otherwise—she can see their identical dark blue quilted jackets, their grey prison headscarves . . . She, Ruhshona, will bring them the truth. She will show them the way.
“I don’t need the very best,” she says. “Let’s keep things simple. Or go without. Don’t waste your money on a lawyer, Ksenia.”
“But why not?”
“It’s not for me to decide. One day you’ll understand. But I’m tired now. Please go.”
Ksenia looks at her watch: oh yes, the time . . . it has been a tough day. “Let Roxana rest,” she thinks: tomorrow she’ll be heading for the city. Perhaps by morning she will have changed her mind—about the lawyer, that is. Ksenia tries to glean something—anything—more from Ruhshona’s facial expressions. But there is nothing to be read there, only utter exhaustion. Yes, it’s time. But if only she could know when they would next . . .
They say their goodbyes.
“Allah is merciful,” says Ruhshona, guessing Ksenia’s thoughts. “We will meet again.”
Ksenia clasps Ruhshona in her arms, though she only comes up to her chest. She presses her head against Ruhshona, hugs her, holds her tightly, not wanting to let go.
“Say something.”
“Allah is merciful,” Ruhshona repeats, then knocks on the door to call the officer. “Please go.”
•
“Happy International Women’s Day, Ksenia Nikolayevna,” the officer says with a nod before locking the door behind her. Ksenia looks at him in bewilderment, as though she didn’t understand.
She steps out into the fresh air, breathes it in deeply, then takes a walk through this dark town, her town. The people are sleeping and she’s awake, but that’s fine, these people have been entrusted to her. Now she knows—knows Who has entrusted them to her, and why. She sees her house, and can clearly picture a big, beautiful minaret behind it, the tallest tower for many kilometers around.
Through the dead of night Ksenia sits in the clean, empty pelmennaya, smiling to herself and eating cold cuts. Her mind is occupied with the burning issues: finding a lawyer and contacts in the city, organizing the building project, consolidating her own power in the town. She is calm. She can handle this; she can handle everything.
Her drunkenness has passed, as has her tiredness, although this has all been rather a lot for her, at her age, to absorb in one day.
“You aren’t getting kicked out of anywhere,” she whispers to herself, “my girl, my daughter. You’ll stay with me. The officials in the city are only human, after all, it’ll all work out. We’ll get rid of our local monsters, and then we’ll take things in hand here in town. We’ll live by the law, by Truth. We’ll work; we’ll do it all together. We’ll get everyone working, from sixteen—no—thirteen years of age. To hell with all those intellectuals and priests, those wimps and weaklings—to hell with them! I’ll drink to that!” Ksenia stops short, realizing what she has said. It seems absurd: “Am I to give up drinking straightaway?” she thinks. “No, I’ll drink,” she decides, “but only on holidays. The big, real, important holidays.”
She dwells in these thoughts for a long time: until the cock crows—a herald, one might say, of her new, all-encompassing knowledge. Then she goes to bed.
•
The day’s events had passed the schoolteacher by. He had taught four classes—one of which was a double—and then had some tea and cake in the staff room to celebrate Women’s Day, a meaningless event, but a good-hearted one, generally speaking. And then he had set off towards the river, to see whether the ice had melted yet.
By the river he runs into Father Alexander, who has come for the same reason; both gaze, smiling, at the sun. No, the river is still covered in ice. The teacher doesn’t know Father Alexander very well, and it is only now that he notices the priest’s beaten, pained look. He has probably been unfair to the man.
“Say,” the priest suddenly asks, “I wonder why the river doesn’t freeze through completely?”
The teacher explains: Unlike other substances, water is at its most dense not at the point of freezing—zero degrees—but at plus four, so the water that does reach the freezing point will always be on top. That forms ice, but what’s below remains liquid. It really is a wonder—if not for this, the rivers would freeze through, killing all the life they hold.
The priest gently nods his head, “Yes, a wonder indeed—more proof of God’s existence.” The river, the sky, the sun: these will remain, but all the rest will pass, ground down in the millstones of time—this is what the priest seems to be thinking.
When it’s so sunny outside it’s a shame to sit indoors, so the teacher decides to linger for a while in town. He is standing outside the new hairdresser’s, and he sees one of his former pupils through the window. She waves to him. Well, why not? He hasn’t had a haircut in a long time. She washes his hair; the warm touch of her fingers feels pleasant against his skin. My goodness, two children! She gave up on her studies, of course—they never really taught them anything there anyway. She’s not a beautiful woman, but she is kind—best not to ask about a husband unless she mentions him herself. How deft she is with a pair of scissors! And does he remember Dmitry Chubkin? No? Dmitry was her former classmate; now she’s Mrs. Chubkina—how could he have forgotten?
“You know, Sergey Sergeyevich, your literary evenings, those were the best things we ever had,” she says. “When you are unwell and browbeaten . . . how does it go?”
“Worn down,” the teacher corrects her, “When you are worn down and browbeaten,” filling in a few more lines, then internally reciting the entire epilogue of Blok’s Retribution to himself. She sweeps up all the hair on the floor, and he looks at it, and at her, and thinks: Blok had thought it impossible that an educated person could go through life without reading Ibsen’s Brand; and here he is—a teacher of literature—and he hasn’t read it. What does he even know of Ibsen’s work? Only what Blok quoted elsewhere: “Youth is retribution.” Retribution? Against whom? The parents? Or even: ourselves?
He goes home and eats, so ridiculously absorbed in Ibsen that half an hour later he couldn’t remember whether he had eaten at all. It has been a happy day, one without the hint of a shadow, almost dull. In the evening he hears
noises outside, but he pays them no attention. He lies down in bed and starts formulating the end of his confession.
It’s time for me to figure out what I believe, and why, despite everything, I remain improbably, wildly happy. Why do I sometimes wake up with that special feeling, like in my childhood, that this is heaven, right here? There is ground beneath me, and sky above me, and there, within reach, there is the river, the trees, the little carvings on window frames, the muddy roads of spring, the cry of domestic fowl, and then, even closer—Lermontov, Blok. Do I, finally, believe in God?
The main barrier between Him and me is Verochka. Verochka’s death was unnecessary; death shouldn’t exist at all. Viewing death as some sort of meeting place, awaiting it like a lover—no, that doesn’t work. So must I then make peace with it, pretend I’m used to the idea? The conditions of this peace are too much for me to bear: go on, sign the surrender. Some say that God didn’t create death—man did: the forbidden fruit, all of that. And others say that it’s part of a logical process; that it would be terrifying to imagine the lives we would live without the prospect of death. So, what, was Verochka just a sacrifice for world order—is that what she died for? Questions, questions . . .
But there are answers too. I believe that a well-placed comma will open many doors for my kids: don’t ask me how, exactly—I couldn’t say. But from these details—comma placement, geometry, continents and channels, the dates of Suvorov’s campaigns, love for Chopin and Blok—sprouts an active, harmonious life.
And, finally, I am free. “Rejoice in the simplicity of the heart, trusting and wise,” that’s what I say to the children, and to myself. I can’t claim to have been the first to say this, but I repeat it so often that I’ve made the words my own. Just as much my own as the sleepy children in my classes, as Russian literature, as all of God’s world.
2009, 2012, 2015
Translated by Alex Fleming
RENAISSANCE MAN
BRICK
POLITE, smartly dressed, with friendly gray eyes, he asks me to tell him about myself.
What’s to tell? I don’t drink, don’t smoke. I have a driver’s license.
A personal assistant, he says, needs to be quick-witted.
“May I ask you to solve a puzzle?”
You’re the boss. Though I’m a little too old for puzzles, I think.
“A brick weighs two kilograms more than half a brick. How much does it weigh? You understand the premise?”
What’s to understand?
“Four kilos.”
Apparently, no other applicant had managed to solve it. Well, construction is my sideline.
“And your primary occupation?”
I’m a pensioner. In our field, we tend to retire early.
Victor, something like the junior boss (I haven’t got it all sorted out yet), asks: “Pension too small?”
Not as small as some, but it’s still not enough. The senior boss straightens things out: “Anatoly Mikhailovich, you don’t have to explain why you need money.”
The name is Anatoly Maksimovich, actually, but beggars can’t be choosers. He’s the only one around here who addresses me by name and patronymic. Victor and the rest call me Brick. Well, so be it. The main thing is, I have the job.
•
We’re high up. It’s quiet. The office takes up the whole of the sixteenth floor. He lives on the seventeenth. That’s the top, nothing above that. He’s got a private office up there, bedroom, dining room, living room, and—what do they call gyms these days?—ah, yes, a fitness room.
I heard Victor say: “The boss understands how money works better than anyone. I’ve got a long way to go before I catch up.”
Victor’s a pint-size fellow, neat, muscular. I was like that myself, way back when. He comes by almost every day, but never sits down. He works the land, as they say—fertilizes the soil. Fixes things. What sorts of things? That I don’t know. My own thing is to make sure there’s plenty of coffee, to replace burned-out bulbs, and to keep track of who’s in, who’s out. The boss appreciates cleanliness: nothing lying around, no papers, no dust, no smells. Cleanliness. And when it comes to people, a clean nose.
“Our office,” says Victor, “is one big family. Anyone who fails to understand that will be fired. Isn’t that right, brother Brick?”
I don’t need to be told twice.
I’ve been here—how long now?—since August. Big workroom, two meeting rooms, kitchenette, set of stairs to the seventeenth floor. Dead quiet, like a graveyard. Global financial crisis.
Most of the time I just sit and wait. That’s no trouble—I’m an old hand at waiting. Watching, listening, waiting.
•
The rich, as they say, have their quirks: the boss, for instance, plays the piano. Nothing wrong with that. In America, people take lessons at seventy, but here—well, we’re not used to it. He had a piano brought up, one of those big numbers; they had to move the walls. So what? If they had to, they had to. Like I said, the rich have their quirks.
We get visits from Yevgeny Lvovich, a decent fellow, and Rafael, an Armenian who teaches music. Victor calls them intels. Intelligentsia, he means. Only, I feel Yevgeny Lvovich really is a cultured person, while Rafael—well, I’m sorry, he just isn’t. That first day he came out of the bathroom, waving his pink little wrists, and went straight to Yevgeny Lvovich. Didn’t even look at me—zero attention, as if I wasn’t there.
“Have you seen the john? Makes a strong impression.” Would a cultured person talk like that? Especially on first meeting someone. “May I ask what you’re doing for the patron?”
“I’m a historian . . . History lessons.” Yevgeny Lvovich glances around, as if he feels guilty of something. He looks—well, can’t say he looks very healthy; his glasses are patched up with tape. And he’s got this tic—he’ll fall silent for a while, then say, “It’s all very sad.”
They’ve taken to calling the boss patron. Fine with me.
“Have you known the patron long, Yevgeny Lvovich?”
How’s it any of your business? You’ve just met Yevgeny Lvovich yourself. Your lesson’s over—get moving.
“At the end of October. On Lubyanka Square, by the Stone. Do you know the Solovetsky Stone?”
“Sure,” says Rafael. “And what was he doing there?”
Aren’t we curious? Sticking our nose where it don’t belong . . . Not my kind of guy, this Rafael. Although, in general, I’ve got no biases—I treat everyone the same. We had all sorts in the service.
“Well, he was walking past, saw the crowd, and came up . . .” answers Yevgeny Lvovich.
Then the patron drove him home, to Butovo. Butovo, I think: that means we’re neighbors.
“You know, I’ve never traveled in such comfort.”
What’s so sad about that? There’s a first time for everything.
“We spoke the whole way, if you can imagine, about patriotism.”
Rafael immediately loses interest; you can see it in his face.
“But it was a beautiful conversation, most useful. It helped me clear some things up. You know, when you speak only to people from your circle . . . Well, a lot goes without saying . . .”
I think to myself, Why’s he apologizing?
Yevgeny Lvovich starts telling Rafael about some woman: “Imagine, her husband is executed. Both daughters die. Another child is stillborn, in prison. And through it all, such unbending, intractable patriotism. What explains it, in your opinion?”
Rafael shrugs his shoulders: “I don’t know. Fear. Collective psychosis.”
“Yes . . . Our patron, as you call him, was of the same mind. But if you ask me, no, it isn’t fear. Do you remember the book of Job?”
Rafael nods. Sure, they remember, but how? These intels turn everything upside down, make it suit their needs.
“Job faces a dilemma: ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Should he tell the whole world, tell all of creation, ‘yes,’ or, as his wife advises . . .”
“Curse Go
d, and die.”
“Exactly. And the Soviet Union, for those who lived in it then, represented just that—the whole world. So . . .”
“That’s a stretch, Yevgeny Lvovich. Many people still remembered Europe.”
“Some remembered, yes—as one remembers childhood. But they knew their childhood had passed. What’s left is what’s left. The Soviet Union was the present, it was what was. Now we can travel abroad. But then, it was either ‘yes’ or ‘no’—‘curse it, and die.’ ”
Rafael cocks his head to one side.
“There’s something to that. You could write an essay.”
Yevgeny Lvovich no longer looks so guilty.
“What a practical mind you have, Rafael!”
“If only. . .” Rafael looks around the office. “Ten years of living out of a suitcase . . . What kind of history do you teach him, anyway? Soviet? Communist Party? The patron ought to have covered that in school. I mean, how old is he? About forty?”
“No.” Lvovich smiles. Look at that, he can smile! “We had to start deep in the past. We’ve started with, let’s call it, sacred history. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . .”
Why did he lower his voice?
“Yes . . .” Rafael slowly shakes his head, and there’s a little smirk in his eyes. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? It means the country stands a chance, so to speak. Think of it: with you, our pupil studies history ‘from Romulus until this day,’8 and with me, music. And then he plays sports—some nontrivial sport, to be sure—and works in finance. That’s a field in which we—in which I, at any rate, am very much behind, if you know what I mean.” It’s impossible to tell whether Rafael is serious or not. “Where there’s finance, there’s mathematics. Just today he was trying to tell me something about the chromatic scale, about the root of some degree or other . . . What range! What scope! I mean, he’s a real Renaissance man!”
Lvovich mumbles something to the effect of: Yes, in a certain way. . .
“You know,” he suddenly says, “what he told me after that first meeting? At parting? ‘Our conversation made a favorable impression on me.’ Just like that.”
