But this time for some reason I couldn’t concentrate, everything around me interfered and distracted me.
In the cloakroom people stamped their feet, brushed themselves down, wiped off their plastered spectacles.
I went into the ladies’ room, with women putting on powder and makeup and a bathhouse noise echoing in my ears. I took it into the concert hall with me.
I try to get into the music, to be alone with myself, but I can’t do it. It’s as if the music has hangnails.
I sit there, seeing the peeling gilt on the circles and boxes, the threadbare velvet.
Someone rustles a sweet wrapper, a cloakroom tag is dropped. From out in the street I hear a fire engine’s siren or an ambulance wailing.
I keep touching the cut with the tip of my tongue.
I think about the music, but my thoughts are worn into holes.
For some reason I remembered you repairing a bicycle at the dacha and standing it in the middle of the veranda with the wheels upwards. The tools were lying on newspaper. I accidentally caught my hip on a pedal and the wheel started turning with a soft rustling sound.
The woman in front of me kept fingering the coral beads on her neck all the way through the first part of the concert, and when she got up at the interval, her seat couldn’t resist it and tried to hoist up her skirt.
I left at the interval, before the second part.
Even more snow has piled up. It keeps teeming down, insatiable.
Cars glide soundlessly through the falling snow, driving round in a circle on the square – they’ve arranged a quiet merry-go-round for themselves.
Snowflakes swarming under every streetlamp. And I can see their shadows.
Even without the streetlamps everywhere is bright from the snow.
And at the crossroads the snow-white light means I can cross the street.
I stopped at a shop window. Children’s warm elephant-slippers. I look at them and they stare back at me.
I went home.
I had gone to bed already, then I got up again, dressed and went outside.
Quiet and blank, nothing but snow. It makes breathing easy, delicious.
I’ve decided to sculpt a little girl for myself.
I’m going to have a daughter.
I take some snow and it’s pliable and plausible. Everything turns out well – little arms, little legs.
When my fingers freeze, I warm them up in my pockets and carry on sculpting.
Little cheeks and little nose. Little fingers, little toes. A smooth, firm little bottom. A navel.
She turned out a wonderful little girl!
I picked her up carefully and carried her home.
Put her to bed and tucked her in.
I touched her feet – little icicles, I started warming them up, breathing on them, rubbing, kissing.
I put the kettle on to feed her raspberry tea.
I warm up her little feet and tell her there’s a country where people with one leg live and they skip about on it faster than people with two, and their foot is so huge that in sultry weather they shelter behind it from the hot sun, and there are other people there who live on the smells of fruits, and if they set off on a long journey they take these fruits with them and sniff them.
As I tell her this, I rub her little heels and look in the mirror, and it reflects the window, and I can see the snow falling.
The little feet warmed up, and I thought she had already fallen asleep.
I leaned down to kiss her goodnight, but she said:
‘Mummy, what’s that?’
‘I cut it on some paper, it’s nothing to worry about, go to sleep!’
I wrapped her up tight, tucking the blanket in from all sides, and was just going, but she said:
‘Mummy!’
‘Now what?’
‘Will you buy me those slippers that are elephants?’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll buy them! Now sleep!’
Sashenka!
My love!
There’s nothing here.
Where’s the helleborine? Where’s the wood sorrel?
No marsh marigold, no meadow gentian, no sow-thistle. And no lovage or tansy.
Where’s the buckthorn? And the orchis? Where’s the field scabious?
Why isn’t there any willowherb?
Where’s the bearberry? And the broom?
And the birds? Where are the birds?
Where’s the yellowhammer? Where’s the black woodpecker? Where’s the gannet?
And the chiffchaff, where’s the chiffchaff?
My love!
My Volodenka!
Every day you’re closer and closer to me.
Just a normal day.
I try to wake her up, but she starts kicking out and hides her head under the blanket.
‘Bunny, it’s time!’
But she burbles:
‘Oh no it isn’t! It’s still night. I’m dreaming you.’
Well, what can I do with her? And it’s the same with everything.
I go to bed very late and fall asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow, although it sometimes seems to me that I fall asleep on the wing. But even so, I set the alarm clock for early. It’s very important for me to get up so that I have a few minutes to myself.
Outside the window – darkness, endless winter, frost.
I brew myself coffee and think about the day that’s just beginning. And about you. And about everything in the world.
I run to the shower and wake up my little bunny on the way. It’s a whole ritual. I start playing Sleeping Beauty with her – muffled up in the blanket, she’s the forests and mountains through which the prince gallops in search of his beloved, and now I – that is, he – have galloped up and start kissing her. She snuffles contentedly, quite clearly waking up, but she won’t admit it. And how fragrant the nape of her neck is before the other smells of the day have attached themselves to it!
But when even the prince is no help, a hedgehog creeps in under her blanket. My little bunny jumps up with a joyful squeal and throws herself on my neck. The day has begun.
I come out of the shower and she hasn’t got dressed yet. She’s putting on her tights with the heels on top of her feet, they won’t pull up. She’s chilled through and shivering, but not doing anything to get dressed more quickly – she’d rather sit there and play awkward.
And she’s got a wobbly tooth too, she keeps touching it with her finger. I slapped her hand and she scowled.
I’m making porridge in the kitchen – we both love to watch the oats in the pan smacking their lips. I call:
‘Come on, where are you?’
She comes, pulling on her jumper, waving an empty sleeve in the air, pretending she has one arm missing, giggling.
‘Stop fooling about! Sit down, will you!’
A new game begins – she smears the porridge round her plate, drawing something on it.
‘Bunny, it’s late!’
She declares solemnly:
‘How can it be late, when it’s still only morning?’
She huffs and puffs over her porridge, but the moment I sink into thought and look at the window overgrown with hoarfrost, I get a slap across my hands.
‘Mummy! Don’t nibble your fingers! How many times do I have to tell you?’
I go back into the room, pull my dress on in a rush, come back – she’s pinched the crumb out of a crust of bread and informs me gleefully:
‘Mummy, look, the crust’s yawning!’
Mooncalf raptures.
We’re already late, we pull our coats on at the double, but the things that were got ready and gathered together the evening before are playing hide and seek. Everything disappears – mittens, cap, scarf, spare shoes and socks. I muffle her up and fasten my own coat on the stairs. In the entrance hall the cold already takes my breath away. We tumble out into the freezing darkness.
We hurry to the stop. Dense gloom. Ringing footsteps on frozen-over pavements. Ice everywhere – I j
ust hope I don’t take a tumble!
We walk by the rubbish dump, I usually try to run past here, but today even the smells are frozen.
Bunny keeps trying to resolve various important matters as we walk along, but I don’t hear anything she mumbles, I can only see the little white cloud emerging from her lips.
There are still lots of stars in the sky, but tears have sprung to my eyes in the frosty air and the stars are all fluffy.
We’re only just in time for the tram. We’re lucky, there are actually two places together. As we ran the last stretch, we thawed out our cheeks and now they’ve gone numb.
Bunny promptly starts breathing on the frosted-over window and rubbing a spy hole in it.
Just a normal tram. Clattering along in showers of sparks. Passengers catching up on their sleep, muffling themselves in scarves, huddling up to keep warm.
We’ve got a talkative conductress.
‘Well then, warm-blooded creatures, frozen stiff, are you? Never mind, you’ll soon breathe the place warm!’
Someone has opened a newspaper above my head. War on the front page, the crossword on the back.
‘Mummy, Mummy, an elephant!’
‘What elephant?’
‘An elephant, there! We drove past an elephant!’
‘There aren’t any elephants in winter.’
She pouted and turned away. Put her eye to the peephole again.
‘But there was an elephant! I saw it!’
She can’t calm down.
‘It’s true. They were leading it along and we drove past it!’
I pulled down her hood and kissed her on the nape of the neck.
It occurred to me that I would have to wash her today. It’s always a joy to do that. And she loves the bathroom too, she can play in there for hours. She’s always thinking up something new, for instance, she’ll start drawing on the steamy tiles of the wall. Or launching little soap-dish ships. Or playing uninhabited islands with her knees sticking up out of the water.
I love going in to join her in the overheated, muggy bathroom, I make sure to shut the door quickly and not let any cold air in. The gas column drones, the hot shower pricks her with its slim little needles, she squeals and splashes.
I wash her hair until it squeaks.
She always pulls on the chain and opens the plughole herself, and then helps the whirlpool swirl round with her finger.
I take the warm towel off the radiator, wrap her up in it, sit down on the toilet and sit her on my knees. I rub her little back, little tummy, little legs. We both like the way the last dribbles of water glug and gurgle out of the bath into the drain – we wait for that growling moment.
She inspects her crinkly fingertips, trying to spot when they turn smooth, turn back into her. I remember how frightened she was the time when she first noticed this, she wailed that she was still little, but her hands were like an old woman’s. She couldn’t calm down until she saw her fingers five minutes later.
Sometimes I look at her and see myself when I was little. Once upon a time I used to munch an apple just like that and walk to and fro along the strip of light on the parquet from the chink in the curtains. I loved the milksop my mummy used to make, just like her: now I cut the bread up into little cubes and toss them into the bowl of warm milk, then sprinkle them with sugar from a teaspoon. Mummy also taught me to make the bed – I showed my bunny once how to make the pillow’s ears stick out from under the blanket, and now the bed is always made up.
But some things are all her own. For instance, she plays with an invisible animal that no one but her can see. He lives in her conch shell. That same Strombus strombidas of ours, which has now become someone’s home.
I really love to watch her playing with this invisible creature, feeding him, giving him tea. I still don’t know what kind of beastie it is. Bunny considerately blows on its saucer, so it won’t scald its mouth. Nags at it not to swill the tea round its mouth before swallowing it. Moistens a handkerchief with saliva, wipes the dirt off its face and scolds it in my tone of voice. And when it falls ill, she treats it with a special medicine – the smell of chocolate, which she keeps in the big box from the New Year sweets.
Sometimes I can’t stop myself, I grab her up in my arms and kiss her here, there and everywhere – on her little neck, her cheeks, the top of her head, and she tries to break free, no more mummy, she says, let me go!
Once when I was putting her to bed she suddenly asked:
‘Mummy, where did I come from?’
‘I sculpted you out of snow.’
‘Not true! I know where children come from!’
She’s funny.
At the station my father climbs into the tram, there are lots of people, we’re sitting at the back and he gets in through the front door, I wave to him, but he doesn’t see. I only hear him speaking loudly, as if he’s on a stage – he’s already had a drink first thing in the morning – telling the entire tram about how they bought him new galoshes when he was a child.
‘Those galoshes made the day a real celebration! Soft crimson baize on the inside! And that delicious smell of rubber! And I just can’t wait to go outside in them, to where the fresh snow has fallen, because the prints from new galoshes are very, very special – like chocolate bars! We pretended that was our chocolate. I took my mitten off, picked a bar up carefully with my fingers and munched on it. And we used to gorge ourselves on that snow chocolate!’
‘Mummy, is there still a long way to go?’
‘No, we’ll be there soon.’
The conductress’s glasses have steamed up, she’s pushed them up onto her forehead and she’s counting the change in her satchel, examining the coins with no heads minted in Utrecht.
‘Mummy, is there still a long way to go?’
I hug her to me and whisper in her ear:
‘Listen, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. There’ll be someone there, don’t be surprised when he lays his head on my knees.’
‘Why? Does he love you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I love you too. Lots and lots!’
And she laid her head on my knees.
Sashenka!
My love! My darling!
I’m on my way to you. Only a little bit further to go.
Something amazing has happened to me.
I suddenly hear this:
‘Right then, show me your muscles!’
I don’t understand a thing and I ask:
‘Who are you?’
He says:
‘Who am I? Can’t you see? I’m Prester John, and everything round here is my kingdom – clamorous, fragrant and imperishable. I am the Lord of Lords and the Ruler of all Rulers. In my kingdom everyone knows his own future, but he still lives his own life, lovers love even before they find out about each other, get to know each other and get talking, and the rivers flow one way during the day and the other way during the night. Tired?’
I:
‘Yes.’
He:
‘Have a seat. I’ll just put the kettle on.’
I:
‘I can’t. I have to be going.’
He:
‘I know.’
I:
‘I ought to hurry. The point is …’
He:
‘I know, I know everything. She’s longing to see you.’
I:
‘I don’t have any time. I’ve got to go to her. I’ll be off.’
He:
‘Hang on, you won’t find her without me. I’ll show you the way. Sit for a while, take a breather. I’ve just got one thing to do, then we’ll be going. I’ll be quick.’
I:
‘Tell me, that picture on the wall …’
He:
‘Well, go on, go on! Don’t worry about me writing. I’ve got to finish this off, there’s only a little bit left. I’m listening.’
I:
‘Where did you get it?’
He:
‘What?’
I:
‘That cross-section plan of a steamship. The one with the sailor drawn in on the anchor, there he is, with a bucket and brush.’
He:
‘You’ve got to take that with you. Take out the thumbtacks and roll it up into a tube. And by the way, don’t you know that the anchor is the only thing on a ship that they don’t paint? Well, all right, that’s a mere trifle. You’ve got to take everything important with you, not forget anything. Have a think, get yourself organised.’
I:
‘But I haven’t got anything. I don’t need anything.’
He:
‘Have you forgotten, or what? You said yourself that the unnecessary things are the most essential. There, hear that?’
I:
‘A stick clattering along a fence?’
He:
‘Yes. Everyone who fancies the idea clatters it as they walk by, some with a stick, some with an umbrella. And now, do you hear that – grasshoppers, as if someone’s winding up a little watch? And that’s a tram rumbling over the points in the distance.’
I:
‘And what’s this?’
He:
‘Those? Prickly burrs. You threw them in her hair. Then you pulled them out again, but they clung on tight. You’ve got to take all that. And the smells! You can’t possibly leave the smells behind! Remember the sweet aroma from the confectioner’s shop? Vanilla, cinnamon, chocolate, your favourite rum truffles.’
I:
‘Look, there’s the list from my herbarium, with “Ribwort, Plantago” written in painstaking childish writing. Are we taking that too?
He:
‘Naturally. And the wood-pile of books from the floor of your room. And your mum’s ring, which is still spinning and jingling on the windowsill, skipping about like a transparent little gold sphere. And the way a certain person used to polish his glasses with his tie.’
I:
‘And the scrap of newspaper stuck to a shaving cut?’
He:
‘Yes, of course, after all, every scrap of paper like that has its own person, unlike all the others, and he feels with his fingers for the hands on his watch without any glass on the dial.’
I:
‘It’s time we were going.’
He:
‘Yes, yes. We’ll be off in a moment. Wait just a little bit!’
The Light and the Dark Page 33
