The Light and the Dark

by Shishkin, Mikhail

  And here’s something else. I remember that visitors came and I hid in a cupboard and sat there in the stuffy darkness until I was missed and they ran outside to look for me. They told me off and asked why I had done it. I didn’t know that myself, but now I realise that I simply wanted them to look for me, find me and be glad that they had.

  You know, when I was a child sometimes the strangest ideas would come into my head. Or perhaps not all that strange. Someone gave us some French biscuits in a beautiful tin, and I started wondering what I could do with that remarkable box. Then I thought of something – I could put all sorts of things in it and bury it, and someday someone would find my box and learn all about me. I put in my photograph, some drawings, stamps, various bits and pieces from the clutter in the drawer of my desk – stones, tin soldiers, pencils and other similar nonsense that was important to me then – and I buried it at the dacha under a jasmine bush. And then it occurred to me that many years from now, when that box was found, I wouldn’t be here any more and neither would Mum or anyone else. I had to put something in the box from Mum too. So I secretly pulled one of her photos out of an album and buried that as well. And then I was struck by the thought that I possessed amazing power – the only people who would remain were the ones I took into my tin box with me!

  I wonder where that box is now? Is it really still there, under the jasmine?

  Mum was always driving me outside.

  ‘Why are you sitting there with your books again? Go on, go and play with the children!’

  But I didn’t like playing with children, they had cruel games and endless tests that you had to pass. For instance, they would hold a stretched catapult up to my eye, to see if I would blink or not.

  When I was a child I really wanted to have a dog, and once I brought a stray puppy home from the street. We fed it. But when mum saw it being sick and immediately licking up its own vomit off the parquet, she wouldn’t let me keep it, no matter how much I begged her.

  What else?

  Granny had a box of buttons and I love playing with them – they were my army. The small white buttons were the infantry, the others represented cavalry and cannons. I remember a huge mother-of-pearl one – that was a general, who always fought against the army of another general – a tarnished copper buckle. I staged entire battles – the buttons rushed into the attack, shouted, grappled hand to hand with each other, died. I raked the dead ones back into the box.

  My Sashenka! How good it is to talk to you about all these things that have disappeared!

  One day Mum took me to a performance by a conjuror. There was probably nothing special about his tricks, but at the time I was completely mesmerised by it all. Objects appeared and disappeared, one thing turned into something else. The ace of spades became the queen of hearts. The conjuror put a coin on his palm, closed his fist, opened it – and there was a white mouse. He cut off a gentleman’s tie with a pair of scissors, then joined the two halves together and the tie was intact and quite undamaged.

  Then he called volunteers to come up on stage and started hypnotising them. Mum couldn’t resist this, although I grabbed hold of her and didn’t want to let her go. It was eerie and enthralling to watch real live people suddenly turn into lunatics right in front of me and move about with their eyes closed. He told Mum that a flood had started and the water was rising in the room, getting higher and higher – and she started pulling up the hem of her dress. But afterwards she said she didn’t remember anything.

  I saw a conjuring set in a toy shop and cajoled Mum into buying it – she gave me it as a birthday present. What a miraculous box that was! Everything needed to amaze and delight an audience was in there. That was probably what I really wanted – not the actual tricks, but for people to love me.

  What remarkable little balls made out of sponge there were in there, and silk handkerchiefs, and ribbons, an egg, a flower – it all looked real, but everything had a trick to it! Special laces, ‘Chinese rings’, a thumbstall – a thumbnail with a wick in it, as if anyone could possibly believe that my thumb was burning like a candle!

  In the library I found a well-thumbed book about various great magicians, hypnotists and conjurors – I liked the idea that a man could be put in a coffin, then buried, and the grave piled over with rocks, and then the coffin would turn out to be empty! And the man who had been buried would be sitting at the table at home, waiting for everyone!

  I also dreamed of becoming a conjuror and hypnotist, and I was surprised that Granny didn’t like my magnificent idea at all, she just sighed and said:

  ‘Monkey business!’

  She wanted me to be enthusiastic about something serious.

  The conjuring set had detailed descriptions of all the marvels, I tried to follow the instructions precisely, but my tricks turned out silly anyway. Or rather, when I practised in front of the mirror, everything worked, in fact the hardest thing was to learn to make the passes for distracting people’s attention, but when I showed my wonders to our guests, they didn’t so much admire my magical art as laugh at my clumsiness. The moment came when I was transfixed by the painful thought that for them I wasn’t a magician at all, but a clown. In the end I came to hate magical tricks.

  But here’s something else that happened involving those tricks.

  My granny fell ill. Or, rather, in the winter she slipped on the icy ground beside the post office, fell and broke her hip. She didn’t get up any more, just lay in bed for months, getting weaker. I remember Mum sighing and saying that Granny was ‘on her way out’. And I also remember the sight of Granny’s hand and head shaking and Mum brushing her hair. My granny was very beautiful when she was young, she had a long, thick plait, as thick as my arm. The plait was cut off once when she was ill and kept by us as a family relic. But by the time she was old Granny’s hair had grown long again.

  One day I came home very late from grammar school. I had picked up a lot of D’s in my marks and I didn’t want to go home because I was sure I was in for another scolding. I had wandered around somewhere until it was late, and now I knew I would get it for that as well. So I arrive home, prepared for the very worst, but instead of scolding me, Mum hugs and kisses me. I didn’t understand what was going on, and then I realised – the doctor came out of Granny’s room and washed his hands thoroughly, every finger separately. Mum had a word with him, then she pressed my head against her chest and said that Granny was already at death’s door. She took me in to say goodbye.

  Shortly before she died Granny became hideous, lying there dishevelled and shaking all over, especially her hands.

  I don’t remember what we were talking about, but she suddenly asked me to show her a magic trick. I shook my head. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to – I couldn’t. But it was impossible to explain that to anybody.

  Mum started coaxing me:

  ‘Volodenka, come on, please! Granny might never ask you for anything again. Why is it so hard?

  But I couldn’t do it. I tore myself out of Mum’s arms, ran off as far away from everybody as I could and burst into tears.

  Before the funeral I was astounded by her calm hands in the coffin. Mum sat there brushing the dead woman’s hair.

  At the cemetery they pushed me forward to kiss her and throw the first handful of earth. I resisted in stubborn silence. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt uneasy somehow.

  I remember that when the lumps of earth started thudding down gently onto the lid of the coffin, for some reason the thought came to me: If only I could open the coffin now, and it’s empty – and Granny’s waiting for us at home!

  They buried her and smoothed out the ground like a flowerbed. And it was absolutely impossible that Granny could have turned into a flowerbed.

  The funeral went on for a long time, I wanted to go to the toilet very badly – Mum let me go to the cemetery’s little hut with a hole in the floor. Standing there over the pit that reminded me of the grave, I felt very acutely that Granny couldn’t be waiting fo
r us at home, that she was there, in her coffin under the ground, because death was real, as real as this putrid, stinking hole.

  Granny’s death left me with a feeling of childish horror. Only somehow I just couldn’t get the fact that I would die some day too into my head. I didn’t become really frightened of that until much later.

  But now I listen to the wounded men’s groans coming from the infirmary tents and I think: What a marvellous death that was! How wonderful to live your life right through and die of old age.

  There, you see how the concept of happiness changes here.

  Do you know what has just occurred to me? That I haven’t given anybody anything in life. I don’t mean the trivial things, but for real. Everybody gave me something, and I took. But I didn’t give anybody anything. Especially Mum. And not because I didn’t want to – I simply didn’t get round to it.

  Yet again these simple ideas come swarming in as if they were revelations.

  And now I’ve realised that I want to give so much – warmth, love, thoughts, words, tenderness, understanding – and everything can simply break off before it has even begun, tomorrow, in five minutes, this very moment! It hurts so much!

  That’s all, I’ll finish for today. My hand’s tired. And my eyes ache – I’m writing to you by the light of a night lamp.

  My Sashenka, I want so much for everything to be well with you.

  I know we’ll meet again.

  What for?

  I keep asking myself that question: What for?

  Why did I have to be punished in this way? In this particular way.

  I was going somewhere in a tram. A sudden pain below my stomach, acute and unbearable. I felt frightened and understood everything straight away, but I tried to persuade myself that it wasn’t that at all. I didn’t know what, but not that. I started bleeding.

  I should have gone straight to the hospital, but I went home, to him. I dragged myself in, he started scurrying about, running round the flat and babbling:

  ‘Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.’

  I never thought I would see him in such a panic. He didn’t even know how to call an ambulance. He was more frightened than I was. I start trying to reassure him that it’s really nothing terrible, but I understand that if the bleeding from the womb isn’t stopped, I could die from loss of blood, and it won’t stop on its own.

  We waited an eternity for the ambulance.

  It felt like my stomach had been stuffed with stones and was being squeezed in a vice. My toes go numb. I’m covered in perspiration and trembling all over. I howl, the pain and the insult are making me hysterical, and he keeps pouring himself cognac, glass after glass, to calm himself down. The pain is hellish. Everything starts going dark, the room is slithering about. Several times I think I’m blacking out.

  Straight onto the operating table at the hospital. Anaesthetic. Curettage. My child came out of me and I didn’t even notice. I was bleeding torrents of blood that flowed in clots.

  Everything inside has been scraped raw – my soul and my womb.

  Now that there is less of my flesh, I seem to collide with everything in the world: a door, people, sounds, smells. Everything is a collision for me. Everything has become noisy, petty, irksome. Unnecessary.

  How could it happen? Only the other day I stopped to examine a shop window full of things for children and was amazed at how much of everything this little mite needed, and now I’m already alone.

  When Mummy found out, she said:

  ‘Cry! That’s what you need right now – a good cry.’

  But Yanka said:

  ‘You should have had an abortion straightaway, then you wouldn’t have suffered.’

  We rented a flat with a nursery for our future child – and now Sonechka stays in it overnight.

  I was recuperating in bed after the hospital and Sonya asked her usual question:

  ‘Well, how’s my little brother?’

  I smiled at her and answered:

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘But why are you lying in bed?’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold.’

  I turned away, pretending to cough into the pillow, so she wouldn’t notice that I was blubbering again.

  And yesterday I took her to the bathroom and started undressing her, but she wouldn’t let me, she turned sulky, the high and mighty madam. To coax her along, I started playing with the clothes pegs, snapping at her, but got too close and pinched her skin just a little. I handed her a clothes peg:

  ‘There, you pinch me too!’

  She takes it and pinches me really hard, so it hurts. I wash her and she yells that the soap’s going in her eyes and her mummy does everything a different way.

  Then I rub her down with the towel, and her clean-washed hair squeaks loudly. When I was little my mummy always said that hair had to be washed squeaky-clean.

  I’ll have a child some day, I will definitely, and I’ll wash my child’s hair squeaky-clean.

  I only realised later why Sonya was so very reluctant to stay the night with us. She still wets the bed. Someone has to get up in the night, check if her sheet’s dry and change it if it’s wet. She knows all this about herself and feels terribly ashamed.

  Today I took her to the dance class instead of him.

  As she was changing her shoes she suddenly stuck her ballet shoe under my nose.

  ‘Breathe in it!’

  I took the shoe and stuck it under her nose.

  ‘You breathe in it!’

  She flashed her eyes at me angrily.

  Sasha! Sashenka!

  My wonder! My glorious one!

  I know I’m not there with you, and it’s hard for you. I wonder all the time how you’re doing there. What’s happening to you? What are you doing right now? What are you thinking about? What’s worrying you? How I long to walk up to you this very instant, stroke you, hug you, press your head against my chest. Please, hold on! You’ve got to hold on!

  I’ll come back, you’ll see, and everything will be all right.

  We only parted so very recently after all, but the time has stretched out for years.

  Especially since I ended up here, time flies by quickly and imperceptibly or, on the contrary, it stands completely still, and I can’t really tell if it exists at all. It’s probably just that behind all the events, time seems to become invisible, but if I remember the day when I tore myself away from you, I realise that an awful lot of it has gone by.

  You can’t even imagine how much you help me, simply because I can write to you! It’s my salvation. Don’t smile – it really is my salvation!

  What have I written? Smile, Sashenka, my wonder, smile.

  I woke up early – that’s the best time of the day here. It was only just light, the morning breeze was still gentle and fresh. Hours like that are the only time it’s possible to live here. Even as I rejoice in the coolness I can already feel the horror of the heat foretokened by this immense red sun clambering out of the haze above the fields of kaoliang. Soon the sun will turn golden, then white. The haze above the fields will evaporate, the morning breeze will fade away and hell will begin again. The heat here can bake your brain in the most literal sense – many men collapse from sunstroke.

  Now I’d like to record the impressions I have accumulated during these days here. Forgive me, my dearest, if I have to write about unpleasant things.

  I won’t write about things because they are important, but simply about whatever comes into my head first.

  Yesterday an officer called Vseslavinsky got drunk on huang jiu and started pestering everybody with his smashed binoculars. That was actually the reason why he got drunk – a bullet hit the binoculars hanging on his chest and he escaped with only a bruise. He showed everybody the binoculars and the bruise. I used to think that fortunate accidents like that only happened in books. He went completely to pieces, he burst into tears like some little boy and kept on and on drinking. It’s strange, because before all this he gave the impression
of being a very cool-headed and courageous man. And this morning he was found drowned in a pond. Near a ruined fanza close by here there’s a little pond in which even a child couldn’t drown. He probably slipped. He was completely out of his mind, after all. When we got him out, streams of dirty liquid flowed out of his mouth and his nose. They tried giving him artificial respiration – it was useless. The surgeon’s assistant stuck his fingers deep into his mouth and pulled out something sticky.

  How stupid it all is!

  And his family will receive notification of a heroic death.

  On the other hand, what else can we write to them? The truth?

  The truth is that we suffer losses every day but, as you see, by no means all of them in battle. Accidents and sunstroke are more common. The heat is still as unbearable as ever.

  The men aren’t the only ones to suffer. Here is what happened right in front of me only the day before yesterday. The second artillery battery was moving out into position. The road ran down from a slight elevation, the horses were moving at a trot. Suddenly the horse that the guiding soldier was riding fell. Fortunately the soldier managed to jump out of the way, but the gun crashed into the horse and broke both its hind legs. It was whinnying pitifully. They shot it.

  But here’s some good news – the remainder of Admiral Seymour’s expedition has returned. They couldn’t break through to Peking, the line had been dismantled ahead of them. They couldn’t leave enough men everywhere to guard it and the railway stations behind them had been occupied by the Chinese army, so there was nothing else they could do but fight their way back. They came back empty-handed. That is, with two hundred wounded. They buried their dead, when they were able, on the spot.