And the only way to die is to choke with happiness.
Translated by Leo Shtutin
__________
1 I.e., the completely expendable members of penal battalions, which consisted primarily of convicted military personnel, Gulag inmates, and POWs.—Trans.
2 Enrolling in a higher-education institution with a military chair was (and remains) a way for young males to avoid otherwise compulsory military service.—Trans.
3 The first and third installments, respectively, of Brezhnev’s ghostwritten memoir trilogy, for which he was awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature in 1980.—Trans
4 An allusion to Solzhenitsyn’s essay “Live Not by Lies” (1974), an appeal for moral courage.—Trans.
5 Varlam Shalamov’s The Kolyma Tales (1978) and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1973) are classics of Gulag literature.—Trans.
Calligraphy Lesson
The capital letter, Sofia Pavlovna, is the beginning of all beginnings, so let us begin with that. It’s like a first breath, a newborn’s cry, you might say. Just a moment ago there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. A void. And for another hundred or thousand years there might still have been nothing, but suddenly this pen, submitting to an impossibly higher will, is tracing a capital letter, and now there’s no stopping it. Being the pen’s first movement toward the period as well, it is a sign of both the hope and the absurdity of what is. Simultaneously. The first letter, like an embryo, conceals all life to come, to the very end—its spirit, its rhythm, its force, and its image.
Don’t go to any trouble, Evgeny Alexandrovich. I’m just a little chick and this is just my scratching. Why don’t you tell me something amusing? Interesting things happen at your work every day, after all. All those crimes, murderers, prostitutes, and rapists.
Good God, what criminals? They’re ordinary people. One blind drunk, another out of his mind, commit God knows what atrocity and are now thoroughly horrified themselves. We have no idea, they say, not a clue. And anyway, how could you even think that I, fine, upstanding man that I am, might do something like that? So they write petitions and solicitations and then more petitions and solicitations, begging for mercy, but no one has the slightest notion of how to hold a pen. Allow me to demonstrate. Lay the left side of the middle finger, down by the nail, against the right side of the pen. Like this. Lay the thumb, also close to the nail, against the left side, and let the index finger rest but not press on top, as if it were stroking the pen’s back. The pen rests against the base of the index finger’s third joint. These three fingers are called the writing fingers. Neither the pinkie nor the ring finger should touch the paper. There should always be space, air, between the hand and the paper. If the hand is constrained and lies on the paper, if even the tip of the pinkie rests there, the wrist has no freedom of movement. The pen must touch the paper lightly, easily, without the least tension, as if it were simply playing. The pinkie and ring fingers, I assure you, are nothing but bestial atavisms, and one can both write and make the sign of the cross without them.
You see, I can never get anything right. For instance, a few days ago I decided to drown myself. Really, don’t laugh. I dashed off a note and taped it to the mirror. But first, for some unknown reason, I decided to stop in at the bathhouse. I have no idea why. Oddly enough, I remember this one sturdy woman washing her red hair across from me. She was sprinkled all over with freckles—on her breasts, her belly, her back, her legs. Her hair was thick and long and soaked up so much water that when she straightened up, the washtub was nearly empty and an entire waterfall came crashing down into it. When I finally got to the bridge, a barge was drifting by below. The men down there shouted something and laughed, as if to say, Come on, jump! I waited for it to pass, but right behind came another barge and another. They kept shouting and laughing from each one and there was no end to those barges in sight. All of a sudden it struck me as funny, too, so I went home, arriving before anyone else, thank God. I took down the note, grabbed a loaf of bread, and gobbled up the whole thing practically. Actually, this is all totally beside the point. Go on. Now where were we?
Why don’t we move on to the line then? But first, sit up straight and relax your shoulders. You can’t write hunched over or at attention. You see, at the basis of everything is the line, the stroke. Take any two points in space, any two objects, and you can draw a line connecting them. There are these invisible strokes between all the things in the world. They make everything interconnected, unseverable. Distance is totally irrelevant. These lines can stretch like rubber bands, which only makes the connections between objects stronger. You see, there’s a line stretching between the inkwell and this ace that fluttered down to the parquet, between the piano pedal and the branches’ shadow on the windowsill, between you and me. It’s like a tendon that keeps the world from falling apart. The pen-drawn line is that connection materialized, so to speak. And letters are nothing but strokes, or lines, held together by knots and loops for stability. The pen ties the line to the form, the shape, and endows it with meaning and spirit—humanizing it, so to speak. Try to draw a straight line! All right, now admire this trembling curly hair. Mortals can’t draw a straight line. A straight line is nature’s unattainable ideal toward which myriad curves aspire. Just as letters cling pell-mell, so too do they all have an inherent harmony and beauty—in the symmetry of their curves, the impetuosity of their slant, the correctness of their proportions. The pen is merely the registrar that faultlessly imprints on paper every dream and fear, every virtue and vice, taking us by the arm each time we press down. Everything that happens in your life immediately ends up on the tip of your pen. Tell me about someone, and I’ll tell you exactly what kind of handwriting that person has.
So start on me.
You are magnificent. You are extraordinary. You have no idea how wonderful you are. And your handwriting, Tatiana Dmitrievna, is pure, fresh, childlike. The letters actually get bigger as they approach the end of the line.
You mustn’t go on like that, Evgeny Alexandrovich! You’re much too kind. Just look at a bit of my writing. Take this. No, better this. No, don’t. Never mind about my handwriting. You’re nothing but a sly widower, chasing after me, and now you’re spinning tales for this gullible, simplehearted woman. I can see right through you even without any handwriting. After all, you aren’t indifferent toward me, isn’t that so? Well then, declare your love right now, this instant. Not that any of this matters. Better not to say anything.
Just think, it’s been eight whole years since my Olya’s been gone. I’m not saying she died, of course. I haven’t told anyone about this since it happened, but I’ll tell you. She and I had been through so much, but for better or worse we’d survived it all together, and suddenly I found myself living with a complete stranger, someone I didn’t know at all. At one point Olya’s right eye started to dim and she started going blind. I took her to Moscow, found a specialist, and they operated. Thank God, she recovered. After that, every six months, and later even more often, she went back for checkups. Whenever I asked, she would say everything was fine, but it felt like she was leaving something out. I was afraid Olya was going blind and wasn’t telling me. She’d changed a lot. She was withdrawn, got annoyed over the least thing, and often cried at night. Before, she’d loved to read Kolya his little books in the evening; now she wouldn’t touch them. I was frightened. I wanted to help somehow, realized there was nothing I could do, and loved her all the more because of it. And then one day at dinner Olya was pouring tea and the china teapot broke right in her hands. We got splashed and jumped up, at which point Olya started screaming that she couldn’t go on like this, that she hated herself but she hated me even more, that she didn’t go to Moscow to see any specialist but to see a man who loved her and whom she loved. I was having a hard time understanding what she was saying. “What do you want?” I asked. “I want to not see you!” Olya started screaming again. “I’d rather hang myself, but I’m not going to go on living like this. I’
m leaving you for him. I love him.” “And Kolya? What about Kolya?” She started to weep. “But this whole thing is impossible,” I said. “I can’t live without Kolya, nor Kolya without you. You want to abandon your son? Kolya can’t go through his whole life being ashamed of his mother and despising her. That’s not going to happen. It can’t.” “I know,” I heard in reply, “you wish I were dead! Fine! I’ll die!” She jumped up and ran out of the room. I tried to hold her back. “That’s crazy! Stop it!” She broke away and locked herself in her room. I got scared and started pounding on the door, but Olya suddenly opened it and in an almost calm voice said, “You don’t have to break the door down. Everything’s fine.” The next day at breakfast, in front of Kolya, she announced there was something wrong with her eyes again and she was going to the clinic in Moscow tomorrow. What could I say? Kolya and I went to see his mama off at the station. Olya was crying and kept kissing and hugging Kolya. The boy kept breaking away and asking her to bring him back a rifle. The next morning a telegram arrived from Ryazan. Olya had fallen ill en route. She’d been taken off the train and had died right there at the station. The telegram had arrived while I was out. When I ran in from work, everyone had gray, tear-stained faces, only they hadn’t said anything to Kolya. The boy had been badgering everyone. “What happened? Is something wrong with Mamochka?” “Oh no,” I told him. “Everything’s fine, everything’s fine.” That same night I went to get her. I had to ride all night. My traveling companion complained of insomnia and suggested we play chess. We moved our men around until morning. From time to time I’d forget, but when I remembered what had happened and where I was going, I’d start wailing. My neighbor would shudder and give me a frightened look. The train car shook, the chessboard shuddered, and the men kept slipping off their squares. Then I would stop wailing and right them. Olya—a beautiful stranger wearing a dress I’d never seen—met me at the station early in the morning. When she saw me she waved and burst into sobs. My first impulse was to slap her across the face. I could barely restrain myself. “What’s going on?” She only shook her head, unable to utter a word. Her whole body was quaking. I sat her down on a bench. “Listen, Kolya doesn’t know anything. Let’s go home and explain that it was a misunderstanding!” At last Olya got a hold of herself. “Don’t interrupt me,” she said. “I’ve made my decision no matter what you all think of me. The space in the baggage car is paid for. There are some minor details left: the lining and the ribbons. The train is at seven this evening. We’ll make it.” It was all crazy and impossible, and I followed her around in a daze. At the store she took a long time and kept finding fault with the fabric and ribbons. Nothing pleased her. Either the colour didn’t go or the material was crummy. She dragged me to another store, and then we went back to the first. We went to one office and then another and another. By six a coffin lined in blue ruches and bows was in a separate room at the station. She’d even thought of that. We stopped in at the refreshment stand. She looked starkly at her plate and swallowed in silence. I couldn’t help it; I started shouting. “But what about Kolya?” “I’m going to have another child,” she said calmly. I recoiled for fear I might kill her. On the way back, to avoid questions, I rode in the mail car. The sleepy worker sorting the mail mumbled, “I’ve shipped lots of these dead folks in my life. Like some tea?” I declined. He slurped away at it for a long time, then lay down and started to snore. The car rocked, and everything rumbled and shook. In the light from the night lamps you could see the cockroaches crawling in from everywhere. Next to me, behind a wooden partition, was the empty coffin. I was in shock. I couldn’t imagine that morning would come and there would be a funeral. The whole time, I kept seeing Kolya asking his mama to bring him back a rifle. It felt like the end of the world, like there would be no coming day or life thereafter. There couldn’t. But then morning came and a hearse met me at the station. There were many tears, laments, and sighs and even more fuss and commotion. They wanted to take the coffin back to the house, but I insisted it be sent directly to the church. I instructed that under no circumstance should the lid be opened. Seeing Kolya was what scared me the most. When I entered his room, he threw himself into my arms. He sobbed and I walked him around the room, kissing his soft, dear, sweet-smelling nape. “Our Mamochka is gone forever now,” I whispered. The funeral was the next day. People shook my hand and said things. Many were just pretending to be sorry, I could tell, and out of the corner of my ear I heard something bad said about Olya. Her mother arrived, a woman trying to look younger than her age, wearing perfume and dressed in black, but elegantly. I thought with horror that she too might be party to this cruel joke, but when she saw the coffin, she started crying and demanding it be opened. “Show me my little girl! I don’t care what happened to her. I want to see her one last time!” I barely managed to talk her out of it. At the funeral banquet everyone kept trying to get me to drink. “Drink up, Evgeny Alexandrovich! Believe me, you’ll feel better!” But I didn’t so much as touch my glass. The evening after the funeral, I could barely get Kolya to bed, he was crying so. I was going to read him a little something, but he suddenly looked at me with angry, hate-filled eyes. “Stop it, Papa. How could you!” I went on leave and took Kolya to Yalta to let the child regain his senses and clear his head. At first the boy seemed to be walking in his sleep, oblivious to everything and refusing to eat. Then a woman moved into the dacha next door with her three sons, who were a little older than Kolya, and the company of boys quickly distracted him. They raced around from morning to night, flew into rages, and fought. Imperceptibly, Kolya grew tanner, taller, and stronger and got to be a good swimmer. One time at the beach, when he and I were there together, he suddenly dove under and for the longest time did not appear above the water. I jumped to my feet, started running, and was about to dive in myself when he popped up in a completely different spot and started beating the water with his fists: “Scared ya!” he shrieked joyously through the splashing. “Scared ya!” Kolya ran around barefoot all the time so his feet toughened up and every evening I greased his hardened, callused heels, to keep them from cracking. At first, that woman from Syzryan came on strong with stories about her creep of a husband, but before long she backed off and started hanging around with some well-built Greek. A year later I received a letter from Olya, from Kiev for some reason. The handwriting was uneven, but it was hers, even though the signature said Sorokina. Olya wrote that she’d given birth to a marvelous little girl, she and her husband adored each other, and she couldn’t be happier.
But quite a few years have passed and you’re still alone, Evgeny Alexandrovich.
How can I explain it, Nastasya Filippovna? One day I had to stay late at work. I was writing up a report. I think it was about some young man who’d killed the mother of his buddy, who was in the army at the time. They tracked the youth down the same day, and he didn’t deny it but kept insisting she’d gotten him drunk and lured him on. A photograph was attached to the case materials—a naked body on the floor, fat and misshapen. There are pictures like that in nearly every file. It’s nothing unusual. By the time I left, it was dark outside, a cold autumn evening, and I started home. Where else could I go? When Kolya still lived at home, I’d always tried to get back as early as I could to feed him, check his homework, play a game. We would cut out little paper men, draw faces on them, and invent all kinds of stories. Kolya had an amazing imagination. He would come up with great yarns and he was always rescuing everyone. Kolya would talk about himself nonstop: about the other kids, his teachers, his grades, all his friendships and arguments. But now I had to force myself to go home to an empty house. So that day, knowing I faced another endless, pointless evening, I took the longest possible route home, then made another detour, and walked like that for an hour, maybe two—aimlessly, I thought—and suddenly found myself outside your house. There was no one outside and the streetlights were dark. I opened the gate and walked in. It was dark in the garden. The only light came from the windows. I got very clos
e. The undrawn curtain revealed nearly half the room. No one was there. Suddenly you walked in and looked out the window, straight at me. That scared me and made me want to hide behind a tree, but I froze, transfixed. You were standing so close you couldn’t have not seen me, but you didn’t even flinch. You turned to one side, then the other, ran your palms over your hips, looking at your reflection, fixed your hair, turned away, and walked through the room and around the table. You were talking to yourself. I couldn’t hear through the double window. I could just see your lips moving. Suddenly your husband loomed up. He’d been lying on the sofa the whole time, and now he stood up, in his robe, disheveled, with mussed hair and a tired, sleepy face. He must have taken a nap right after work. He put his arms around you, lay his head on your shoulder, and shut his eyes. Then the children were brought in, to say goodnight probably, because they were wearing their nightshirts and were all pink under the lampshade. You made a cross over your daughter and son and kissed them on the forehead. The little girl kept holding out a book to you, probably trying to talk you into reading to her before bed. First you shook your head and your face was stern, but your little girl begged you so, so you smiled and sat down next to her in the armchair. Your child wiggled for a long time getting comfortable and then fell still with her little mouth open, on a flight of fancy to a land of trolls, or naughty ducks, or enchanted frogs, places you and I can never be. Meanwhile your spouse started a game of blind man’s buff with your son, put a coin in his eye to look like a monocle, and paddling with his arms, chased the little boy around the room. The child was in such ecstasy that his cries, shrieks, and laughter splashed out the window and scattered over the stiff, chilly garden. You tried to calm them both down a few times and spoke sternly, probably about how the children shouldn’t get so worked up before bedtime, or words to that effect, but even you couldn’t help laughing and gave first one and then the other a playful smack with your little book. The coin popped out and your husband got down on his hands and knees to reach under the chair for it, whereupon the boy jumped on his neck and the girl on her papa’s back. You were all laughing hard. Finally, the children were taken off to bed. Your spouse lit up and sat down with the newspaper under a lamp in a corner of the sofa. You settled in beside him with a fat book. Then you got up, brought a pillow over, plumped it up at the other end of the sofa, and lay down, wrapping your legs in a big warm throw. You read like that for a long time, with your legs draped across his knees. Once you looked into the corner together—up. It was the clock chiming. Occasionally he would read you something out loud, some funny item. He would laugh and shake his head while he read, but you would just smile faintly, not even looking up, you were so engrossed in your book. Then he folded the paper, yawned, said something to you, you just nodded, and he went out. You kept reading, first sitting with your legs curled underneath you, then lying on your back. From time to time you would take a pin out of your hair and scratch your head. I didn’t notice how cold it was, that I was chilled through, but I just couldn’t leave. I kept standing there watching you. At one point you stood up and took a box of candy from the sideboard, balanced it on your knees, and ate piece after piece, wadding each wrapper up in a ball and flicking it away. Suddenly, from upstairs, came a child’s cry. You jumped up, dropped your book on the table, and rushed out of the room looking frightened. No one was there for a long time. Then your husband appeared for a moment and the light went out. But I kept standing there. I was afraid to leave.
Calligraphy Lesson Page 3
