Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Maxim Osipov

  “Hold on. I’ll ask ma.”

  By now I’m well versed in the local lingo: ma means wife.

  I push Alexander Ivanovich’s door half open. Strange. It’s unlocked. Looks like the neighbors have encroached on his territory. To say that he lives (lived) modestly is as good as not saying anything at all. Times are hard for lots of people these days. But here you can still get by: the standard of living’s low—it’s the provinces.

  The wife comes in, so now there are two of them, and you can sense the aggression building. Both are heavyset, disheveled, and the smell is bad. I explain why I’ve come—no, they can’t help me.

  “What are those jars for? Are they his? Alexander Ivanovich’s?”

  “They’re ours,” the wife replies. “We’ll take them.”

  Their neighbor’s gone. He left.

  “When? Where’d he go?”

  “What, he’s got to tell us everything?”

  Typical: though they have no qualms about barging into his home, the pair take offense at the very suggestion that they might have paid the least bit of attention to their neighbor. The bedrock of the regime. I’m just saying, as an aside.

  In the evening I had a thought: What if they’d killed my Alexander Ivanovich? And why not? The fat man and his ma had that look about them: practical. And the last name fit too: the Krutovs—hardboiled. They killed him, hid the body or buried it somewhere, and now they’ve got the use of his room. There are fewer and fewer odd folks around, fewer and fewer eccentrics—not just in Moscow, but here too. When I was young, they were every place you looked. So where had they all gone? I tell you where: they succumbed in the struggle for existence.

  I shared my thoughts with the chief of the local police.

  “The Krutovs? No,” he says, “I don’t think so. It’s not the nineties any more.”

  Strange logic.

  “But if it’s gotta be done,” he said, “we’ll look into it.” He added: “Put the screws on . . .”

  “So long as it’s all by the book.”

  He took offense: “When have we ever done otherwise?”

  Well, you know best.

  •

  At that point I remembered the notebook. Read it. And if you were to read it, you’d probably understand the persistence of my inquiries.

  I didn’t turn to Makeyev directly (you’ll learn about Vladilen Makeyev, a local author, in Alexander Ivanovich’s notes). I asked my neighbor to do it—a female artist of unquestionably Russian stock. Makeyev was also, naturally, no help.

  Several more months passed in anticipation and unsystematic searches, with telephone calls to all sorts of unpleasant institutions—regional, Moscow, federal . . . I left no stone unturned, no number undialed. It became ever clearer: Alexander Ivanovich was not among the living.

  •

  Before you read the notes, I’d like to say a few words about the bombardment of the city, which was—what do they say: executed, carried out?—by the commander in chief. I haven’t managed to discover any direct confirmation of the aerial attack on Eternity—that is, of the event Alexander Ivanovich describes. But I did come across an item reporting on the bombing of the House of Culture in a similar town. It was called Dead River, or the Dead River Valley, in translation from Nenets, and it too was situated in the Far North.

  A couple of quotations: “The news agencies report that the abandoned settlement’s House of Culture was subjected to bombing by strategic aviation. A group of bombers conducted a test of new long-range cruise missiles on the settlement target. On board one of the planes was the commander in chief,” and so on.

  It isn’t difficult to track down the details: “The mayor was at the test site when the missiles were launched. According to him, the first missile flew slightly above the target, but those that followed went straight through the building. ‘The president gave us twenty minutes’ warning,’ our witness says with a smile. ‘We found bits of missiles that were still hot. Amazing technology, and an amazing strike,’ the mayor states.”

  There’s a clip on the Internet chronicling these events: the takeoff from the airport, the aerial refueling, the missile launch, the return. “Judging by the expression on the commander in chief’s face, he’s satisfied,” an offscreen voice declares.

  “They talk about him like he’s some sort of animal,” my nurse said when I showed her the clip, as if she were personally offended.

  Let me repeat: I’ve found no direct confirmation of what Alexander Ivanovich describes. But cruise missiles have been tested, and they’ll continue to be tested. And there are a number of settlements named Eternity on the map. Not just Eternity, either, but also Happiness, Loyalty, Bravery.

  •

  The reader is sure to have questions. Can a murderer really become mayor? Or: Where did the line about the Pont Mirabeau and the Oka come from? I’ll reply: I’m no expert in the contemporary practices of appointing leadership, or in contemporary poetry, but it’s unlikely that Alexander Ivanovich would get things wrong or invent them.

  I have lingering questions of my own. Should I have admitted him here? But if one begins hospitalizing patients not for medical reasons but on humanitarian grounds, on the grounds of personal sympathy, what would that lead to? We don’t perform major cardiac surgery, and there was nothing else we could do for him here. And also: Why did he want me, of all people, to have his notebook? Did he simply forget it? Judging by the myriad insertions and corrections, Alexander Ivanovich took great care with his notes. What did he know about me? What was he trying to warn me of? The danger of getting swept up in the theater? I keep my distance from the theater as it is.

  A year has passed since the author’s disappearance. I gave him about a year to live, at most, and could not have been mistaken in my diagnosis. As I understand the law, Alexander Ivanovich can already be declared a missing person, which means it’s time to publish his story. And if, against all likelihood, he is alive, he probably wouldn’t be too upset: men rarely keep notes “for themselves,” and Alexander Ivanovich’s narrative style assumes a reader. All I’ve done is add chapter titles; there weren’t any in the manuscript.

  Here’s my fantasy: let’s say Alexander Ivanovich had the operation and is alive and well in Germany, say, or even in America. Well, this publication might get his attention. That would be wonderful in and of itself, and would give him a chance at fame (or as Makeyev put it, repugnantly, “to make a noise”). I’d gladly transfer the fee to his name. After all, there’d be no more need for all my forewords and afterwords.

  I haven’t bothered changing any names.

  June 2015, Tarusa

  THE GRAPE

  “ ‘I must have been born for some lofty destiny. . .’13 Men always have notions, dreams. So, Alexander Ivanovich—did you always dream of becoming a literary director?” Lyubochka asks me.

  Lyubochka Schwalbe is one of the people I’ll miss for the rest of my life. Schwalbe is the German word for swallow—a little swallow. She takes a large green apple from a tray and pokes it with her index finger: “The real thing,” she says, and takes a bite.

  “Lyuba, what are you doing?” cries the props mistress. “You’ll gobble all my props! Next time you’ll get plastic instead.”

  “Forgive me for speaking with my mouth full, Valentina Genrikhovna. For your information, apples are an excellent source of vitamin E.”

  Valentina Genrikhovna waves her arm: “You’ve already got plenty of E in you . . .”

  Valentina Genrikhovna has worked at the theater almost as long as I have. An amazing person: not only does she manage stage properties, she also handles the catering. Without her, all of us—actors and lighting technicians and so on, including the administration—would have starved to death. And she’s right, apples like those aren’t easy to find around here.

  “You see, Alexander Ivanovich, they begrudge me perishable props,” Lyuba says plaintively when we’re alone again. “So, you were going to tell me . . .”

&n
bsp; I love when she’s in a talkative mood. What did I dream of becoming? No, not a literary director, of course. I’d had a different dream. But no regrets.

  Lyuba leaps up: “Oh, Slava’s calling me! Alexander Ivanovich, why don’t you do any writing? Please, write something! Promise?” She’s already flying up the stairs.

  A memory—a timeworn memory.

  •

  And something more recent. My friend here, Vladilen Nilovich Makeyev, a member of the Union of Writers of many years’ standing: “Come on,” he suggests, “let’s write something about your life. Great material. We’ll place it in the newspaper, in October. Write whatever comes into your head, and I’ll do my part, polish it up. I’ve got a title for you, ready-made: ‘I Come from Eternity.’ ”

  Makeyev isn’t a bad fellow, although he has his issues, you might say. He’s admitted to me that his name isn’t really Vladilen. His passport gives it as Vladlen.

  “It’s on the plain side, don’t you think? Vladilen is more interesting.”

  I go out for a walk with Makeyev nearly every day. What else am I to do? I’m retired, sitting on my hands, but Vladilen Nilovich amazes me: Where on earth does he find the time to prepare those tomes of his? Last month he brought me a manuscript: No Hand in the Matter—one thousand, two hundred pages, a novel. It bothers him that I haven’t yet read it.

  “Well, if you aren’t going to read my work, you can at least write your own. Let’s do it, one step at a time. When you’re done, we’ll go over it, tidy it up. If you ask me, there’s nothing like the memoirs of ordinary folks. If you don’t want to give it to October, we’ll shop it around to the Moscow papers. You can make a noise at the national level. I’m telling you, it’s a good title: ‘I Come from Eternity.’ ”

  I happen to come from greater Chelyabinsk. Still, why not have a go at it? I’d been given a glimpse of a little slice of the world. There must be some reason for that. It was a very brief glimpse of a very little slice—but I saw it. I did.

  •

  A small town outside of Chelyabinsk. Not even a town, really—just a factory, practically in the open countryside. And beyond it—concrete cubes, caravans, little houses. A school over here, an infirmary over there, a women’s dormitory, and the smaller cube is the men’s. People from Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev had been sent here, across the Urals. They’d evacuated entire institutes: If you don’t bring production round by autumn, then it’s on your head, they said. No one complained; they did what they had to do—there was a war on. Nor did they consider whether what they were manufacturing was dangerous.

  I hardly even remember it, the war, and it was soon over, anyway. Only we were in no hurry to leave the Urals: there was no place to go, really. A person could make a life anywhere, my mother said. Home is where you lay your head; in that sense, I’ve taken after her. My mother and I lived in the dormitory, with her two sisters. The other women weren’t self-conscious around me—nor have they been especially self-conscious around me since; I don’t know why.

  School. Not much to say about that. Besides, I promised an episodic account of my life, not a full one. My mother asked me to learn more poems by heart: you can take poems wherever you go; they don’t weigh you down. She always was on the move.

  •

  I was about eleven years old and there was one thing I desired with all my heart—a microscope. I felt this pull, a terrible pull, to see the invisible. I probably wouldn’t have turned down a telescope, either, but I was pining for a microscope.

  One time Mother took me along to Chelyabinsk. A consignment shop. Mother’s rummaging through odds and ends, and suddenly, there it is. I can’t believe my eyes: under the glass on the counter—there it is! Mother, Mother, come quick! I remember it like it was yesterday: a little microscope with a cardboard tag that read, in black ink, “four hundred.” Mother gazes at it sadly: we’ve been promised a bonus . . . But she sounds so uncertain. She takes me by the hand, we leave the shop, and I don’t ask her for a thing. Which means she doesn’t refuse me. We walk on, tending to her affairs, but evidently I looked so disappointed that she decided to take me to the theater.

  It’s hard to say who was sorrier for whom—Mother for me, or the other way around? Word of honor, I don’t remember what the theater was called or what they were staging. Some fairy tale. We sit in the dark, me thinking about the microscope, and then . . . Nothing special, really: the actor places a grape in his mouth. Couldn’t have been real—where would they get such grapes in the Urals? And the actor looks straight at me, and his face assumes an expression of bliss, an absolutely natural expression of bliss. And I begin to taste the sweetness in my mouth. It seems to me I’ve never tasted anything more delicious in all my life. And the actor wipes his hands on his trousers. Mother always told me not to do that. The grape juice had made his hands sticky—and even when he comes out to take a bow, he keeps wiping them. He isn’t acting any longer; he’s not pretending. Mama, do you see that? And that was that: I was going to be an actor. I didn’t need any microscopes.

  Mother laughs: remember how stubborn you were—didn’t want to learn how to pronounce r? We laugh about that the whole way home: “Great grapes do grow on Ararat.” And the next day she brings me a book: Boris Godunov and Other Dramatic Works.

  The first pages are torn out, so Boris Godunov begins straight off with: “How shameful, prince.”14 Boy, do I like that opening! I run around the dormitory, weaving between lines hung with linens, shouting, “How shameful, prince! Prince, shameful!” giving the women a fright.

  •

  “Have you ever gazed into the abyss, Alexander Ivanovich?” asks Lyubochka, raising her big eyes to my face.

  Why do you ask such things, dear, and with that expression? I nearly said: Like a provincial actress. She might take offense. Of all people, Lyubochka is the last I’d want to offend. No, most of what I know about the quagmire of passions comes from literary sources. Even though I’d been married, and barely escaped with my life. It was thanks to my marriage that I wound up in Eternity.

  “Oh, tell me, tell me—pretty please!”

  It was like some sort of dream, my family life. Is there any point in describing dreams?

  “You’re a cheerful person,” Lyubochka says with a sigh. “And I bet you’ve done everything right, since you were a boy.”

  Since I was a boy. . . No, all I’ve done since I was a boy was try to enroll in acting schools.

  “So it wasn’t meant to be.” This is our Slava speaking, Slavochka Vorobyev, the audience’s darling, whom all the actresses love. Our Hamlet, Oedipus, Don Juan.

  You shouldn’t eavesdrop, Slavochka. But yes, you’re right.

  After the morning’s rehearsal, the actors go their separate ways, and Lyuba and I are again on our own. She stares at the door Slavochka has just gone through: “Alexander Ivanovich, tell me, what should I do?”

  At the time I didn’t understand what she meant.

  •

  But let’s get back to it, one step at a time, as Makeyev instructed. A degree from the teacher’s college, with a specialization in Russian language and literature. An assignment to a labor youth school, LYS. The army didn’t want me: a heart murmur. Eight times I tried to enroll in an acting school. Didn’t manage to get in. But I did manage to get married. Then I buried my aunties, and after them, Mother—she went quickly, without warning.

  By that point I’m thirty-three, teaching Russian to the “lice” (as they referred to themselves). I’m married. My wife had an uncommon name: Aglaya. I called her Glashenka. A German teacher. The school had allocated us a room, with quiet neighbors. Summer, holiday time. I’m sitting in the kitchen, looking through the paper—Party members subscribed to Pravda, but we got Izvestiya. In the main room, Glashenka is getting dressed, prettying herself. She isn’t trying too hard to hide the fact that she, as they say, has someone else. Nor do I want to meddle in her affairs, create scenes, dramatic confessions. They were right to reject me from acting sch
ool: I lack the proper temperament. Now I understand that about myself, but back then . . .

  Back then I sat with the paper over cooling tea, and the paper said that in the Far North there is a mining town named Eternity where they extract rare types of coal. And that it featured all the amenities—a bathhouse, a hospital, and even—beyond the Arctic Circle!—a little park. And recently, Izvestiya reported, culture had arrived. A library had opened its doors, a theater had been built—a truly unusual facility for such a small territorial entity as Eternity. The theater was described in detail: fly system, revolving stage, side stage . . . Evidently the correspondent had also been rejected from acting school.

  My wife left for her date; I took out a piece of paper and wrote: I would like to work for you. Are you in need of a literary director? I have the relevant education, a degree in literature. I’m married, with a clean record, able to obtain a character reference. Address: Severogorsky District, Eternity, Theater.

  To my surprise, and to Glashenka’s even greater surprise, I received a response, by telegram: Come, we’re waiting. It went without saying that I’d be making my way to Eternity alone. My wife would take her time, think things over . . . A few months later she—actually, the notary—sent me divorce papers. She could have sent them herself, of course, but she never much liked writing letters. I took no offense.

  •

  To this day I can close my eyes and see: two-, three-story buildings, everything flat, symmetrical, if not for the river. The river added a bit of variety, even though it was iced over from September through May. A post office, a savings bank, a tiny market, a single track, the station. Now I bet only the ties are left, without rails, but back then we had trains coming and going: freighting coal, carrying passengers. What else? Carousels, a shooting range. A Lenin statue, not too tall, surrounded by skinny trees: the park Izvestiya had mentioned. The fact that the sun never sank below the horizon in the summer—that was, of course, surprising. But eventually you get used to it. Just as you get used to the fact that it doesn’t appear at all from the end of November to February.