I remember you, and the world is divided into before the first time and after.
Meeting for a date at the monument.
I peeled an orange and my palm stuck to yours.
You came straight from the clinic, with a fresh filling in your tooth and the smell of the dentist’s surgery coming out of your mouth. You let me touch the filling with my finger.
And here we are at the dacha, whitewashing the ceiling, after we’ve covered the furniture and the floor with old newspapers. We walked around barefoot, with the newspapers sticking to our feet, and got whitewash smeared all over us. We scrape the white out of each other’s hair. And our tongues and teeth are all black from bird cherries.
Then when we were hanging the net curtains, we ended up on different sides, and I wanted so much for you to kiss me through the netting!
And then there you sit, drinking tea, scalding your tongue on it and blowing to get it to cool down, taking little sips and slurping so loudly, not at all worried about it being impolite, as they impressed on me when I was little. And I start slurping too. Because I’m not little any longer. And everything’s allowed.
Then there was the lake.
We walk down the steep slope towards the waterlogged bank, feeling the damp, spongy path under our bare feet.
We waded out into open water, free of duckweed. The water’s murky and full of sunlight. And cold, from the springs that feed it from below.
And then, in the water, our bodies touched for the first time. On the shore I was afraid to touch you, but here I pounced on you and wrapped my legs round your thighs, trying to pull you under. When I was little I used to play like that with Daddy at the seaside. You try to break free, you try to pull my hands apart, but I won’t give in. I kept trying to duck your head right under the water. Your eyelashes stick together, you swallow lots of water, you laugh and splutter and bellow and snort.
Afterwards we sit in the sun.
Your nose is peeling, the skin is flaking off the sunburn.
We watch the bell tower on the opposite shore rinsing its ragged image in the water.
I sit there in front of you almost naked, but somehow I only feel shy about my feet and my toes – I buried them in the sand.
I singed an ant with my cigarette, and you came to its defence.
We walk home the short way, straight across the field. Grasshoppers jumping about in the tall grass molest my skirt.
On the veranda you sat me in a wicker chair and started brushing the sand off my feet. Like Daddy. When we came back from the beach, he used to wipe my feet down just like that, so there wouldn’t be any sand left between my toes.
And everything was suddenly so clear. So simple. So inevitable. So welcome.
I stand there facing you – in my wet swimsuit, with my arms lowered. I look into your eyes. You took hold of the straps and pulled the swimsuit off.
I’d been ready for this for a long time, I was waiting, but I was afraid, and you were even more afraid, and everything would have happened much sooner, but that time, back in spring, remember, I took your hand and pulled it down there, but you jerked it away. You were quite different now.
Do you know what I was afraid of? Pain? No. There wasn’t any pain. And there wasn’t any blood either. I thought, what if you thought you weren’t my first?
It was evening before I remembered I’d forgotten to hang my swimsuit up to dry. It was lying there abandoned, clumped up, wet and cold. It smelled of pond scum.
I snuggled against you and kissed your peeling nose. There was no one in the house, but we whispered anyway. And for the first time I could look right into your eyes, without being afraid or embarrassed about anything – brown, with hazel and green flecks on the iris.
Absolutely everything suddenly changed – I could touch everything that only a moment ago was untouchable, not mine. A moment ago it was someone else’s, but now it was mine, as if my body had expanded and melded with yours. And now I couldn’t feel myself except through you. My skin only existed where you touched it.
That night you slept, but I couldn’t. I wanted so much to cry, but I was afraid I’d wake you. I got up and went to the bathroom, and cried to my heart’s content.
And in the morning, at the washbasin – a sudden surge of foolish happiness at the sight of our two toothbrushes in the same glass. Standing there with their little legs crossed, looking at each other.
The very simplest things can make me die of happiness. Remember, back in town already – you locked yourself in the toilet, and I was walking by to the kitchen and I couldn’t resist it, I squatted down by the door and started whispering into the keyhole:
‘I love you!’
I whispered it really quietly. Then louder. And you didn’t realise what I was whispering to you, and you muttered back:
‘Just a moment, just a moment.’
As if I needed the bathroom.
It’s you I need, you!
And then there you are, sitting in front of the oven with a spoon in one hand and an open cookery book in the other. Something suddenly came over you – you said you’d cook everything yourself and I mustn’t interfere. And I kept coming into the kitchen on purpose, as if I needed something, but really only to look at you. Remember? You were kneading minced meat, and I couldn’t help myself, I stuck my hands in the saucepan too – it was so wonderful to knead that fragrant, beefy pulp together, and the mince oozed out between our fingers!
You didn’t really get along too well with ladles, oven mitts and frying pans – everything came to life in your hands and tried its very best to wriggle free or pop up in the air or slither away.
I remember every single little thing.
We lay there clasped together and couldn’t let go – and that semicircle my teeth left on your shoulder.
Our legs intertwine, our feet nestle against each other, sweet-talking, and our cream-slippery toes slither into each other.
In the tram people turn to look at us: your left fist is up beside my nose, and I’m kissing the first knuckle on the forefinger – the one that’s July.
On the way up to your place, the lift seems to creep along so unbearably slowly.
Your shoes under a chair, with the socks stuffed into them.
That was when you kissed me there for the first time, and I just couldn’t relax. When you’re growing up you know you mustn’t touch that place. It’s only little boys who think little girls have a secret between their legs, but that place is full of slimy discharges, noxious vapours and bacteria.
In the morning I couldn’t find my knickers, they’d disappeared. I searched through everything and couldn’t find them. I still think you pinched them and hid them somewhere. I left without them. I’m walking along the street, the wind’s creeping up under my skirt, and I have the incredible feeling that it’s you all around me.
I know I exist, but I need proofs all the time, I need to be touched. Without you I’m an empty pair of pyjamas, thrown across a chair.
My own arms and legs, my own body, have only become dear to me because of you – because you have kissed it, because you love it.
I look in the mirror and catch myself thinking: that’s the one he loves, isn’t it? And I like myself. But I never used to like myself before.
I close my eyes and imagine that you’re here.
I can touch you and hug you.
I kiss your eyes, and suddenly my lips can see.
And I want so much, like I did then, to run the end of my tongue from one end to the other of the little seam you have down there, as if you were a bare-naked little plastic boy who’d been stuck together out of two separate halves.
I read somewhere that the smelliest parts of the body are closest to the soul.
Now I’ve turned the light out so I can finally curl up into a tight little ball and fall asleep, and while I was writing to you, clouds have covered over the sky. As if someone has wiped everything off the school blackboard with a dirty rag and there’s nothing le
ft but white streaks.
I have a feeling everything’s going to be all right. Destiny is just trying to frighten us, but it will preserve and protect us against genuine misfortune.
Sashka, my dear one!
I bluff and bluster, but in reality without you, without your letters, I would have died ages ago, or at least stopped being myself – I don’t know which is worse.
I wrote to you about our tormentor, the one I dubbed ‘Commodus’, after the infamously bloody son of Marcus Aurelius – the nickname has stuck, but the soldiers have shortened it to ‘Commode’. No doubt because of his obsession with shit. Today he made a special effort to explain to me exactly how life works. I don’t want to write about it. I want to forget, think about something else for a while, about Marcus Aurelius, for instance.
I don’t understand what connection there can be between Marcus Aurelius, who died a million years ago, who everyone has heard about, and me, who no one has heard about, sitting here in my prickly official-issue underpants.
But on the other hand, here’s what he wrote: No man is happy until he considers himself happy.
Probably that’s what we have in common – we’re two happy men. And what difference does it make that he died one day, and I’m still here? Compared with our happiness, death seems like a mere trifle. He stepped straight through it to me, as if it was a doorway.
This feeling of happiness comes from the realisation that none of all this around me is real. What is real is that first time I was at your place and I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and saw your sponge there and felt so intensely aware that it had touched your breasts.
My Sashenka! We were together, but I’ve only really begun to understand that here.
And now I remember it all and I’m astonished I didn’t appreciate it all properly then.
Remember, the fuses blew at your dacha, you held the candle for me and I stood on a chair, fiddling with my makeshift repair. I glanced at you, and you looked so incredible in the semi-darkness, with the light from the candle flame washing over your face! And the bright spark of the candle was reflected in your eyes.
Or look at this, we’re walking through our park, and you keep running off the asphalt strip of the path, tearing up bunches of grass and bringing different kinds of seed heads to show me.
‘What’s this? And what’s this called?’
You walk on, your heels smeared with mud.
Your poor toe is black and blue – someone trod on it and crushed it in the tram, and you’re wearing open-toed shoes.
Then I see the lake.
The water has turned thick, overgrown with duckweed and clouds.
You walked right up to the edge, lifted your skirt and stepped into the water, up to your ankles – to try it. You shouted:
‘It’s cold!’
You pulled one foot out and ran it across the surface, as if you were ironing out creases.
I see it all as if it was happening right now, not then.
You get undressed, tie up your long, loose hair and walk into the water, checking the bun on your head several times.
You turn over on your back and flail at the lake with your legs, and your heels twinkle pink in the foamy spray.
Then you throw out your arms and legs, lying there like a star, the bun on your head comes undone and your long hair spreads out in all directions.
Later, on the shore, I glanced stealthily – so you wouldn’t notice – at the place between your legs where the wet curls were peeping out from under the elastic of your swimsuit.
And now I see your room.
You take off your shoes, leaning down one shoulder, then the other.
I kiss the palms of your hands, and you say:
‘Don’t, they’re dirty!’
You clasp my neck in your arms and kiss me, biting my lips.
Suddenly you yelped.
I was really frightened.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You caught my hair under your elbow.’
You leaned down over me, touched my eyelids and lashes with your nipple. You drew your hair over both of us like a tent.
I pull off your knickers, they’re like a child’s – cream-coloured with little bows – and you help me, you raise your knees.
I kiss you on the spot where the skin is most tender and sensitive – on the inside of the thighs.
I bury my nose in the dense, warm undergrowth.
The bed creaks so desperately that we move to the floor.
You groaned under me and arched up in a bridge.
We lie there and the draught feels good on our sweaty legs.
Your back is covered with delicate fluff and patterns from the coarse ribs of the Chinese straw mat. I run my finger along your sharp vertebrae.
I take a pen off the table and start joining up the moles on your back with an inky line. It tickles you. Afterwards you twist and turn in front of the mirror, looking over your shoulder to see how it turned out. I want to wash it off, but you say:
‘Leave it!’
‘Are you going to walk about like that?’
‘Yes.’
You flung your feet up on the wall and suddenly started running across the wallpaper in little steps, you arched up, braced your elbows on the straw mat and froze with your legs up like that. I couldn’t resist it, I wanted to kiss you there – you folded up straightaway, collapsed.
I’m leaving, and you’ve come out to show me to the door – in just a little singlet with nothing underneath. You suddenly start feeling embarrassed and pull down the hem at the front with your hand.
On our last night I woke up and listened to your snuffling.
You were used to sleeping like a chrysalis, you wrapped the blanket round your head and only left a little air hole for breathing. I lie there, looking into that hole. And you’re so funny – you’ve gone to sleep with a chocolate sweet stuffed into your cheek, and there’s chocolate dribbling out of your mouth.
I lie there, keeping watch over your breathing.
I listen closely to your rhythm. And I try to breathe together with you. In … out, in … out. In … out.
Slowly … slowly. Like this.
In …
Out …
You know, I’d never felt so light and easy as at that moment. I looked at you, so beautiful, so serene and sleepy, I touched the hairs peeping out from your blanket cocoon, and I wanted so much to protect you from that night, from any drunken nighttime yelling outside the window, from the whole world.
My Sashenka! Sleep! Sleep well! I’m here, I’m breathing with you.
In …
Out …
In …
Out …
In …
Out …
I peeped in the letter box – again nothing from you.
I have to prepare for a seminar tomorrow, and my head’s empty. I don’t care. I’m going to brew some coffee, pull my feet up on the armchair and talk to you right now. Listen.
Remember how good it felt telling each other things about our childhood? You know, there’s so much I still haven’t told you yet.
But now I’m chewing on my pen and I don’t know where to start.
Do you know why I was given my name?
When I was little I adored all the lovely different little boxes and caskets in the bottom drawers of our sideboard, I spent ages rummaging through the things my mother kept there – bracelets, brooches, playing cards, postcards, everything on earth. And then in one box I found a pair of child’s sandals – all tiny and shrivelled, small enough for a doll.
It turned out that I had an older brother. When he was three, he fell ill and was taken into hospital. And what they said about him was really terrible – they said he was doctored to death.
My parents decided straightaway to have another child. To take his place.
And a little girl was born. Me.
My mother couldn’t accept her child, she wouldn’t feed me and didn’t want to see me. They to
ld me all this afterwards. It was my father who pulled me through. Me and my mother.
In my little cot three of the wooden bars had been sawn out so I could crawl through. But it was his cot, the other child’s. Only I couldn’t understand then that the hole was for him. That he used to crawl through it. I liked scampering through it as well, but I was really only repeating his movements.
For me that boy had been left behind in some unimaginable life before I was born. If it ever existed, then it had faded into some kind of prehistoric age, but for my mother it was right there beside me, all the time, it never went away. One day we were going to the dacha on the train and a child was sitting opposite us with his grandmother. Just a normal child with a squeaky voice and runny nose who couldn’t pronounce his r’s properly. He kept pestering his grandmother for something. And she kept snapping back:
‘Just calm down, will you!’
And I remember the way my mother flinched and shrank when the old woman said:
‘Sasha! We’re getting off here!’
When we got off the train, my mother turned away and started rummaging desperately in her handbag, and I saw the tears pouring out of her eyes. I started snivelling and she turned round and kissed me with her wet lips, trying to reassure me that everything was all right, that it was just a midge that had flown into her eye.
‘But everything’s all right now!’
She blew her nose, touched up her mascara and snapped her powder compact shut. And off we went to the dacha.
I remember that was when I thought: It’s a good thing that child died. Otherwise, where would I be now? As I walked along, I repeated what my mother had said: ‘But everything’s all right now!’
I couldn’t not have been born, could I? Everything around me, everything that was and is and will be, is simple and adequate proof of that, even this small window frame with its mouth wide open, and these flat pancakes of sunshine on the floor, and the cheesy flakes of curdled milk in this mug of coffee, and this faded mirror playing at stares with the window to see who’ll blink first.
The Light and the Dark Page 2
