The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

by Ulitskaya, Ludmila

  The window, indeed, was semicircular at the top, with small asymmetrical pieces of stained glass, and almost all the pieces were irregularly shaped. The house was in the moderne style, built by Grandfather in better times …

  Windows and doors … Windows and doors … Even a child knows the difference. A door is a boundary. Behind a door lies another space. You enter it, and you yourself change. It’s impossible not to change. While a window merely lends its knowledge for a time. You look, and then you forget. But that’s already concerning my dreams.

  That day, the day of Grandmother’s death, Vasilisa’s hour arrived. She knew everything about death. How it’s done. How to bathe, dress, and mourn the dead. What clothes to dress them in, what prayers to read, what to eat and what not to eat. I submitted to her completely, without the least hesitation. And not only I, but Anton too. She took everything in stride, issued instructions, and we did as we were told.

  By evening Grandmother lay stretched out on the expanded dining room table, her hands crossed in meek submission across her chest and bound together with an old stocking, her chin propped with a headscarf folded over four times into a halter, and her eyes covered with two large worn five-kopeck coins. Where had Vasilisa dug them up? Had she brought them with her?

  An icon lamp burned at the head of the table, and Vasilisa read slowly in Church Slavonic before the icon. I sat on a stool next to the table, saying farewell to Grandmother. I was twenty-four years old. Neither my brothers nor my parents were alive at that point, but I learned of my parents’ deaths only many years later: at that time we still didn’t know what “ten years without the right to send or receive letters” really meant …

  It was the first death I ever witnessed. I can’t say that I was frightened. I stood in profound respect before this incomprehensible event and tried with all my powers to understand what was taking place: the chasm impervious to reason or emotion that separates living and dead, and especially that instant itself when live and warm Grandmother had metamorphosed into a strange, unneeded thing that had to be removed from sight as quickly as possible and tucked away deep in the earth. Everything Vasilisa did—solemnly and unhurriedly—was soothing, precisely because without all her incomprehensible actions it would have been impossible to remove this cold object. The white shirt, the shroud, and the new leather slippers that Vasilisa had examined so nitpickingly, as if Grandmother really needed this light pair of new shoes with blunt toes and metal-lined holes for laces in order to journey the easy roads that lay beyond the grave …

  Anton Ivanovich requested that the coffin not be taken to church, but that the priest be invited to the apartment. Everyone was under observation and frightened. Pursing her lips, Vasilisa nodded, and late in the evening on the eve of the funeral she brought to the apartment a wee old man to whom she could entrust the departure of her benefactress. Anton Ivanovich left to spend the night at his relatives’ because he didn’t want to know anything about the whole business: he had a good job at the plant and a blemished family history.

  The old man who showed up looked like an ordinary beggar. But when he took his vestments and an epitrachilion from his bundle and donned his Iberian cross, he turned into a priest. With greatest piety he spread a piece of embroidered fabric on the desk, which Vasilisa had washed clean. It was the antimension with pieces of relics: on it he consecrated the Eucharist. That was the first liturgy in my life. We had never been taken to church: that had been Father’s condition when he had allowed the children to live at Grandmother’s. The version of Tolstoyan Christianity in which we were raised after Grandmother returned us—three-and four-year-olds—to our parents totally rejected the ceremonial aspect of religion, recognizing neither church, nor the Theotokos, nor icons, nor saints … This time I really wanted to take communion, but wasn’t able to say so. The priest then performed burial rites. After the secret prayer service was over, the little old man slipped away imperceptibly into the night. I never saw him again.

  The night after the burial I woke up and went into the kitchen. I don’t know why. Maybe to get something to drink. There in the kitchen in her usual place sat Grandmother in her blue dressy dress with starched lace collar. On the table in front of her there stood a tea glass in a metal holder. She was drinking tea. Everything looked so usual that I began to wonder whether I had dreamed that she had died.

  “Tea?” she offered. I nodded. The teakettle was hot. The teapot had a fresh brew in it that was unusually fragrant. I poured myself some tea and sat down next to Grandmother.

  “So you didn’t die, did you?” I asked.

  She smiled, and her white, even teeth gleamed. She has new false teeth, I thought, but said nothing so as not to embarrass her.

  “Die? There is no death, Lenochka. There is no death. You’ll soon learn this.”

  I finished my tea. We were silent, and it felt good.

  “Go to sleep,” she said, and I went without asking about anything.

  I lay down in bed next to Anton, who was mumbling something in his sleep.

  And fell asleep immediately. What had that been? A dream? Not a dream? Neither a dream nor not a dream. A third something. I don’t know what to call it. A third state equidistant from the dream world and the waking world …

  Now, after all these years, I suspect that in addition to this small conversation Grandmother said something else, but the rest of it has not been preserved in my memory. What was preserved for the rest of my life was just my firm knowledge that when you are inside a dream, all of your usual world turns into a dream. Waking reality and dreams: they’re like the front and back sides of the same cloth. And what about that third state? Is it like a top view in mechanical drawing?

  Over time, with increasing experience, I have learned how to distinguish one from the other almost infallibly. In the usual daytime world things are totally deprived of mystery and their real content. Although expensive cups get broken and it can be very sad when a favorite thing is ruined, and in our family—out of poverty and family tradition—we used to glue cups back together, repair broken things, darn, and patch coats and pots, still when a thing becomes truly unusable, it gets thrown out.

  In dreams, things are not entirely real: a cup might not always hold water—as if it still hasn’t been trained to. Things in general come to exist not of their own, but only at the moment when they are needed, and as soon as the need disappears, they immediately disappear. They are abstract until you think, “What was the picture on that cup?” And then the picture appears. In and of themselves things don’t get damaged and don’t grow old: they are deprived of any independent existence. That’s what I’ve figured out.

  But the third realm is something else entirely. Precisely the way things behave makes it easiest to distinguish a real dream from what I call the third realm. For example, the tea glass Grandmother Evgenia Fedorovna was holding was not a glass at all. It was an identity, like Grandmother herself. Possibly, it had its own name, unknown to me. It was large, of a particular size in order to fit an unusually large tea-glass holder, and both of them were custom-made. The tea-glass holder, it seems, is a distinctively Russian object. Nowhere do they drink tea the way they do in Moscow. But this tea-glass holder was particularly Russian, made of thick silver in the shape of a little tree stump, the surface of the silver imitating wood bark and the holder’s handle shaped like a little ax wedged into an upwardly slanted branch covered with tiny glued-on leaves and stalks of leaves blown away either by the peripeteia of kitchen life or the fantasy of an apprentice at the Fabergé factory where the tea-glass holder had been crafted. An ostentatious object designed for merchant tastes, of the kind intended as a gift, with a polished plaque for the inscription: “TO DEAR VASILY TIMOFEEVICH …”

  Grandmother had smiled a fleeting smile as she drank her fragrant, dark-gold tea from Grandfather’s glass, but the inscription had been missing. Where could it have gone, that piece of rhymed nonsense composed by his colleagues: “Timofeich, time for tea! S
ome like honey, some like jam, but Vasya is a cookie man!”

  … On closer examination the tea-glass holder turned out to be more elegant than the original, which has survived to this day. There in the third realm it seemed to look nicer; at the very least it differed from its real-life self just as the fragrant, exotic tea differed from the ordinary yellowish slops that Grandmother Evgenia Fedorovna had drunk all her life, even when she had lived in her rich father’s house … She didn’t like strong tea …

  Approximately the same thing happened with all the objects I happened to see while not in dreams or in memories, but in that third realm: they were, if not more refined, then enhanced to a certain degree of perfection. As if an invisible craftsman had worked on them in order to return to them their dignity and true character. In any case, that’s what could be said with complete confidence about Grandmother’s formerly dressy dress. The next morning, I woke up back in the completely ordinary world and first thing headed for Grandmother’s armoire and pulled the dress out to look at it in the light: it was slightly faded in the shoulders and the drooping collar was mended in several spots. I swear: at night the dress had been new, and the collar solemnly stiff …

  And the teapot in the kitchen was still warm …

  The next time Grandmother invited me to tea was in the spring of 1941. You, Tanechka, were two months old; you were a weak, cranky child, and both Vasilisa and I were exhausted. That night Vasilisa had lain down with you in order to give me a chance to get a good night’s sleep. I was awakened by the smell of tea, the same tea—I recognized it immediately. I went into the kitchen. Grandmother was sitting at the table. The teapot was hot, and the silver tea-glass holder stood on the table in front of her, but she was not drinking tea and did not offer me any. She was dressed strangely: in a beret draped over with a country-style headscarf and in an overcoat with large, neat patches, and buttonholes edged with new fabric. As soon as I walked in, Grandmother stood up: she had a big bundle in her arms. She opened it up and shook her head.

  “No, it’s too big.”

  And the big bundle immediately became smaller. The bundle’s metamorphosis did not surprise me in the least: one word had been enough for everything to become as it was supposed to be. Grandmother began to gather kitchenware in the contracted bag, meticulously examining each object. Three spoons, three cups, three plates. A small pot, a frying pan, and a metal mug for cooking children’s porridge. Then she added salt and dry cereal to it.

  Her demeanor was stern and sad. Then she took the tea-glass holder, pulled out the glass, and poured the tea into the sink. Fresh, strong-brewed, fragrant tea. Then she unbuttoned her overcoat, unfastened from the collar a small golden brooch in the shape of an arrow with emerald gemstones, placed it in the tea-glass holder, and put them in the bundle as well. It seemed as if she wanted to say something to me. But she didn’t say anything, and just pointed to the stuffed little bundle.

  I told Vasilisa about it. Vasilisa crossed herself, nodding her head up and down.

  “Oh, Elena, they’re coming for us. They’re coming for us …”

  But they didn’t come for us. I remembered all this when three months later evacuation of the plant began. The little bundle, and the brooch. Vasilisa had everything prepared. She knew what the vital necessities were. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why Grandmother had chosen to appear to me and not to Vasilisa. Vasilisa was much more practical, and she had a lot of experience, although at the time Vasilisa had told me nothing of her secret, heroic, and implausible life.

  Anton was certain that he would not be called to the front. He was an engineer, and practically all engineers had deferrals. But owing to confusion and stupidity he was mobilized, while people who knew less than he did remained at the plant. It’s possible this was somehow connected to his unsociable personality. He never was friends with anyone, never trusted anyone. To be honest, I see absolutely nothing in common between the two of you …

  We didn’t even say good-bye to each other properly. There was terrible panic at the plant: at the end of June rumors were already circulating about the plant being evacuated, and we had to archive part of our work in progress, and the entire section was piled with papers and drawings, while there was already half as many employees, and everything was upside down and hopelessly confused. On top of all that, you were ill, Tanechka, and twice a day Vasilisa brought you to the checkpoint. I would go out to nurse you, but I did not have much milk, and I was nervous and afraid it would disappear entirely.

  And so, preoccupied with childhood illness, Anton and I said good-bye, and it was only after he left—the gathering point was on Mytnaya Street for some reason and he had forbidden me to go there, so Vasilisa went—that I realized what had happened.

  Having cried the night through, you fell asleep, and I collapsed alongside you. It was very hot. Our apartment was directly under the roof, and in the summer it was intolerable there. So it was hot in reality, and I also dreamed that it was hot.

  Whether it was on earth or not, the place was completely unrecognizable. The soil was reddish and dry, dusty, and filled with stones. Strange plants grew—resembling cactuses, but as huge as trees. The thorns on them were sharp and retractable, as if made of blue iron. The trees breathed through these thorns, and they would extend out and then fold back in, like a cat’s claws when it’s asleep. Up ahead, Anton Ivanovich wandered among the prickly trees, not looking back. He wore a military uniform, but the uniform was old-fashioned: tight-fitting leggings, a short jacket, and Anton Ivanovich himself thin and with the build of a young boy. If you two have anything in common, it’s body type. The narrowness in your hips, and that upward stretch of neck and chin. Yes, that’s it. It had never occurred to me before.

  So, there he was, walking off, while I rushed after him, wondering why he wouldn’t stop and wait for me. Especially since those cactuses, though they stood in place like plants are supposed to, kept snagging me and scratching me with their claws, no matter how hard I tried to stay as far away from them as possible … The distance between us kept increasing, although I was walking fast and he was walking very slowly. But I couldn’t shout. I don’t know why; all I know is that it was impossible, forbidden. He kept moving farther and farther away, and at the last minute I saw him not on foot, but on horseback. He galloped quite skillfully among the trees until he finally disappeared entirely. At that point it was as if I was allowed to return, and the cactuses withdrew their steely claws and grew smaller and smaller, until they were the usual size, like the aloe and kalanchoe plants on windowsills, and the soil was no longer red, but ordinary, with grass that was ordinary but very soft and tender …

  Vasilisa sometimes does good interpretations of dreams, but that time she said little.

  “Each of us travels the preordained …”

  BUT I KNEW THAT WITHOUT HER. OF COURSE, THE FIRST thing that came into my head was that he would perish at the front. But why that black uniform, those cactuses, those thorns … Why was it forbidden to shout? The main point is buried. But the most surprising thing is that ultimately it will all become clear. I am absolutely sure that nothing is shown to us by chance, that nothing is superfluous …

  But still, lots and lots of things are unclear. For example, in the waking world it’s clear as can be to everyone that life is logically and irreversibly divided into past, present, and future, and all our feelings and all our thoughts are well adapted to this. Even our language and its grammar. At the same time there is a completely amazing unity to each given moment when two people are together, even if just in the same room, and each of them has a different past and—when one of them leaves the room—a different future, too, while for that single instant their present is one and the same. And moments like that occur not all that infrequently. And they leave very strong impressions. And when you remember them, it’s as if they were restored, but in some sort of new grammatical category that doesn’t exist in our language … So it’s difficult to explain. I can�
�t explain …

  Many things have been shown to me that I can neither understand nor explain. For example, back in Siberia when I was lying in the hospital after my operation, and it wasn’t clear whether I was alive or not, my consciousness just sort of floated somewhere, in some mist, but not in water. Then someone pulled me out of it, and I found myself in a white-painted bed, and PA appeared. And it immediately became apparent that the accumulation of water I had been floating in was the past, and that I had always been acquainted with this man with the round forehead and wide-set eyes. Both in the past and in the future. But he himself belonged to the present. And even now, as I remember back, I sense myself in the present more strongly than ever before. Because PA possesses a special power for residing in the present.

  But what variabilities we undergo in the present! A lot slips by without a trace, leaving no impression whatsoever, fleeting by as if it never happened, while other things move slowly, distinctly, meaningfully—as if for a poor student forced to learn everything by rote, without forgetting anything, to the very last letter. Of late, I often feel frightened that I could forget the most important things. And so I’m writing things down, convulsively, understanding well that I’ll forget all the same, but the main thing is that what I write down is only a shadow of what I see and feel …

  Another experience—or vision?—I had also relates to that realm of the most important which in no way belongs to the present. To what I tentatively call the third realm. “The Great Waters”—I’ll call it that because this condition or event—they’re hardly distinguishable—has to be designated with words of some kind … In any event PA wasn’t around then; it happened before him … Basically, before he appeared I had been in many places, including the Great Waters … But my “I” was somewhat different then than it is now: blurred, small—like a child’s or just undeveloped. And blind, it seems. Because no pictures, no images from those occurrences have been preserved in my memory. There was nothing firm, rigid, or angular, just moisture—encompassing or flowing—and I sensed myself to be more moisture than a hard body. But moisture that doesn’t spread, condensed moisture like a piece of undissolved starch in watery kissel or a jellyfish in the foam along the shoreline. The wealth of impressions I perceived in my blindness was immense, but all of them occurred on the surface of my not entirely delimited body, while my “I” was hidden deep below, in the middle … Impressions that were sooner those of food—tasty, not tasty, tender, rough, thick and sticky, sometimes sweet and so sharp they made me shiver and feel feverish, and sometimes simply sweet, or particularly sweet—from which I couldn’t tear myself away, and they seemed to suck in my entire being and lead me off somewhere. I also experienced various kinds of motion, like swimming, but more chaotic and requiring great effort, and while moving I encountered various streams that washed over me sometimes tenderly, and sometimes vigorously, like a massage. They stroked me, made me ticklish, tenderly sucking me in, then letting me go …