Calligraphy Lesson

by Mikhail Shishkin

  Of course, my unclad little people, there’s been a misunderstanding, you were misled, I explained to them, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s too late. Live as best you can! Here, my brothers, each has his own share of agony, his own path of suffering is marked out, and there’s no avoiding it. Each must drink to the dregs! They strain and howl, as if to say, Why? We are innocently condemned! they say. And I tell them, Hush! You’re all like this at first. But later? You don’t honor your father and mother, you create idols, you commit adultery, you covet your neighbor’s ass! So suffer and don’t squawk! But again they holler! And wail!

  When I came in, Alexei Pavlovich was wiping the dirt off the jars, disturbing the dissected popeyed creatures’ peace.

  Zhenya? Why are you here? Someone could stop by at any time.

  Look at that, Alyosha,9 you’re afraid of me. I can tell. I was at your house yesterday. I went to see Vera Lvovna specifically because I knew you weren’t home. I went to convince myself that she doesn’t have long left. There’ll be no need to hide, and this humiliation will end. We’ll live openly, together, afraid of no one, and I’ll give you a wonderful baby, scrumptious, chubby-cheeked, blowing bubbles from satisfaction when we tell him the bogeyman’s coming to get him. My father will deliver the baby. He’ll hold my hand and say, “Push, mama, push!” And everything will turn out well. I’ll recover, I’ll crunch a cucumber, and pale, tormented, and beautiful, I’ll look down at you from my window, as you stand on the sidewalk under an umbrella, chilled to the bone, happy.

  Zhenya, you have no idea what nonsense this is. You have to understand. This is vile, this is just plain vulgar, this is the height of banality—to cheat on a dying wife with a young idiot in love with love!

  Yes yes, Alyosha, exactly so. A hymn to vulgarity. Banalissimo. Pistils and stamens. Life and death.

  Quiet, Zhenya, I’m exhausted. Listen, tomorrow I’m taking Vera Lvovna south, to Yalta. For a month maybe. Or more. We’ll see how it goes. You have to understand. Even when I talk to her about the weather, I feel like the worst scoundrel on earth! You know I’d leave her without a second thought, but how can I abandon someone in this situation? You don’t understand. Some things are more important than love! Zhenya, my sweet Zhenya, we must part. Temporarily, of course. Vera says to me, “Where are you taking me? Why? What does it matter where I croak? Our friends are here, here Zhenya comes by.” And I don’t know what to tell her or how to explain. Well, why don’t you say something? Say something quick, before they come in.

  Bon voyage!

  I was reading to Roman. Me in the armchair under the lamp, him on the couch. When the book was over, we sat in silence. I kept turning the lamp on, then off. What now? I mean, is the light on or is it dark? Not that that matters, Evgenia Dmitrievna, because I still hear you sitting. I’m a nocturnal animal, you might say, Evgenia Dmitrievna, and we don’t need light. One night I’ll up and pounce on you. I’ll sneak up and pounce.

  It’s been night for a long time, my kind Alexei Pavlovich, it’s past two, and I wanted to sleep, but I can’t, and my thoughts are all of you, or rather, of me—actually, they’re one and the same. Can you hear the beetles droning in the fogged-up kill jar? Do you remember? You were lying in the spotty birch shade, covered with yesterday’s newspaper, and sunspots and crooklegs were running across it. The fidgety daughter of your aging classmate, with whom you set out to assemble a collection for the dacha nature museum she’d just devised, was playing shaman around you, scooping up anything that flew, crawled, or stirred with her swift net. Having caught some pointless creature, the novice insectarian brought it over for identification. A piece of an article had imprinted itself on your wet forehead mirror-image. For a long time you examined the find under your magnifying glass, listened closely, eyes shut, to the droning in your fist, and finally announced, “Congratulations, child! This is the rarest stroke of luck! What a marvelous example of Dungus flyus.” That was enough for this ninny to double up in the grass in fits of cascading girlish laughter. After she caught her breath, she badgered you about your wart: the girls had showed her a house where an old woman lived who bit off warts and licked the wound; she had some kind of special saliva. You were embarrassed and didn’t know where to hide your hand. Later, on the cliff, she found a mighty, primordial swing: a very long rope with a stick at the end had been tied to a huge oak. There you were, sitting on a stump and reading a newspaper, though they’d long been expecting you for dinner, while the bundle of mischief swung and swung, and you, tearing yourself away from the letters, watched her rise up on tiptoe and clumsily pull up her foot to finally get one end of the bar under her, watched her freeze for a second, take a step, in the pose of a boy galloping on a pony, and then pull up her other leg, take a hop, lean way back, and fly off, spinning slowly, into the clouds.

  I didn’t go to classes and spent all day in bed. Early that morning my father came home from his shift. He was mumbling something, talking to himself, and he clattered his spoon in his glass for a long time. Then he went to bed. Mika got up and started checking on me with a thermometer, or milk, or drops of some kind or other. She tried to talk me into rubbing my legs and chest down with vodka. At last it was quiet: Mika took Roman to the professor’s for his lesson, but before leaving she brought me a plate of apples. I snaked the apple peel spirals around my arms like damp bracelets. The boiler man stopped by to check the flue. He was just a minute, but the smell of wet, broken-down boots, cheap cigarettes, and green firewood lingered all day. My father got up. The crackle of fresh newspapers and the hot breath of borscht reached me. Mika and Roman came back from his lesson. Roman started tuning the piano, all the time repeating that the instrument was fine but very much neglected. He banged on the keys until I started pounding on the wall with an ivory knife handle. They quieted down. That evening my father and Mika went somewhere, and Roman paced around the apartment silently, feeling everything as he came to it. Only the old parquet creaked. That night I couldn’t get to sleep, but on the other side of the wall they droned on. I was listening hard but could catch only snatches. Then I picked up a big glass flask that had roses in it, removed the flowers, poured the water into the chamber pot, and pressed the flask’s bottom to the wall.

  What are you trying to prove and to whom? There’s no going into your place: you have a corpse peeking out of every nightstand. You’re still young, healthy, and strong. No one would dare reproach you for anything. You were a little boy then and you still are. You dug your heels in and stood counter to life, and you think you can hold out. But you’ll be swept away. You’ve got this idea that Zhenya—it’s as if she were her deceased mother and you were living for her. But that’s wrong. You know nothing about your daughter. She’s not yours anymore, she’s her own person. You keep reaching for her to keep from drowning, but you don’t have her anymore. Have you told Zhenya about her mother?

  Mika and my father were silent for a long time, only I could hear the wet stems dripping from the edge of the table onto the floor. The ear I had pressed to the flask’s neck was sweating.

  When she came to us then she wasn’t herself, I could tell right away. I asked, “Why didn’t you bring little Zhenya?” And she said, “Leave me alone.” I thought, Well, to hell with you. Living makes me sick even without you. If you don’t want to tell me anything, you really don’t have to. Then for some reason she stopped by at my neighbor’s, a pharmacist. His little boy used to like all kinds of experiments, and his father had made him a laboratory. The lad started showing her his treasures. “If you drink from this test tube,” he said, “you’re a goner!” All this became clear later. In the middle of the night I suddenly woke up from a scream. I couldn’t figure out what was going on because people don’t scream like that. Then it was quiet. My Roman was breathing heavily, but she wasn’t there. The bathroom door was locked from the inside. Behind the door there was some movement, shuffling, rustling. Scraping. I shouted to her, but she didn’t respond. I wanted to give it a kic
k to make the latch give way, but then I looked and her fingers were reaching under the door. I shouted, “Your fingers, take back your fingers!” But they kept reaching. Somehow I got across the balcony to the bathroom window, broke the window, and nearly lost my grip, though it was only the second floor. I grabbed her and picked her up. She looked at me with horror in her eyes, she was trying to say something, but there was a jumble where her mouth should have been.

  Evgenia Dmitrievna, thank God I’m blind, not legless, and there is no need to grab me by the arm and push me. I just need to hold onto your elbow. Like this. Let’s go. And if you think that this makes me deeply unhappy, then you are mistaken, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I can see that you’re unhappy. I can’t see, of course, I said that wrong, though that’s not something you can see with eyes, rather I can sense it. But you’re not unhappy because you can’t fly, for instance, or walk through solid objects, walls or earth. Isn’t that so? I know you’re afraid of me, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I mean, you think you pity me, but in fact you’re afraid. Because it’s yourself you pity, not me. Thinking about me, you imagine yourself in the dark, eyeless, and naturally for you this is scarier than dying. But the point is that blindness is a seeing person’s concept. I live in a world where there is no light or dark, and that means there’s nothing awful about it. My God, you should have warned me there was a sidewalk here.

  God, prankster and coward, supreme lover, insatiable sperm-hurler, who each time chooses the guard for his fevered treasure on a whim—a bull-boor, swan-sneak—or sometimes you pierce me like sunlight—you’re still a silly-billy. Remember how you kept dawdling and mumbling that you were afraid of hurting me? A god-child, even on a stolen bed, on that heavenly sheet, you wanted to be my obedient reflection, my pliant guide, and here you wanted to be my child. Here’s Europa, straddling the horned monster, driving him on with her heels, Leda enveloping her flock with rustling wings, Danae grabbing the stiff but timid ray of light with both hands. A god-bungler, you tried to snatch everything on the fly, displaying your obscene zeal, and you became reckless, surfeited, pitiless, each time collecting your tribute more and more divinely, more and more lustfully. It was both frightening and thrilling to see the squinting, blood-filled bull’s eye, to feel the swan feathers tickling my hips and the beak cropping the fragrant grass, and to see the golden rain twisting and turning as it spanked my belly and breast. Do you remember how you came to love the Mount Ida shepherd? The boy didn’t suspect a thing, the boy with the rooster, or rather, chicken leg wrapped in a napkin so it was easy to hold; we took the other leg to the hospital. The child sat Turkish-fashion, poking the air with his knees; still wet, not chilled after bathing, he gnawed the leg, sucked the bone, crunched the cartilage, and his sharp little-boy shoulder blades, reflected successively in two mirrors and so seeming like someone else’s, kept appearing and disappearing. Could this bird have flown past Ganymede? The naked adolescent jumped up, froze warily, not knowing whether to hide his nakedness from the eagle, still not understanding but already rigid from sensuous horror. The talons grabbed the boy’s arm where his pockmarks were, squeezed, pierced them painfully, nearly broke the skin. Ganymede broke away, ran off, and tried to scream, but gasped for air: the mighty black wing fell on him and crushed him. Ganymede tried to beat it off, but his hands were twisted behind his back. Fear and sweetness mingled, the boy was afraid but simultaneously urged on this suppressed squawk, and the sharp bird tongue, wetting his ear, and the royal eagle talon, which had already groped out the road to the sky. Don’t listen to me, my thinking pistil, know only that I love all of you, from your gray hair to the two hot hamsters squeezed in my hand.

  I walked by a few times. Then I couldn’t help myself and went up. I was just about to put the key in the lock when I thought I heard someone walking on the other side of the door. I was about to go away but thought better of it and rang.

  So, you’re Dmitry’s daughter. Come in, don’t just stand there. Alyosha told me, “Mama, I’m going to take my Verochka to the sea, but you can stay here for now. You never know what might happen.” So here I stay. I think, who have I dressed up for, old woman that I am, got all made up for, put on my rubies for, set out the brandy for? I never expect visitors. Then all of a sudden—you. Drink up, sweet girl, drink a glass with an old woman, or else I’ll go on drinking alone and reminiscing. Alyosha was very young when I said, “Eat your sausage, son!” He refused. Then I said, “Do you want me to make you a Maltese cross?” I cut off the sausage edges and fried it up. He ate it all and asked for more. “A Maltese cross!” he shouted. “A Maltese cross!” I said, “You’re my nut, Alyosha! You’re eating words, not sausage.” What a happy one you are, sweet girl. You still don’t know that you are me. You don’t understand? No need. You wouldn’t anyway. And by the time you do, I’ll be gone—my skin, my hair, my eyes, my guts will be gone. And what’s the use of bones alone?

  I woke up and thought it was raining, but it was doves on the iron cornice.

  Poor Mirra Alexandrovna decided I couldn’t take a step without her. Here she was, torturing herself and me. But in fact, it’s she who’s helpless, not me. Getting oriented in the so-called visible dimension doesn’t necessarily mean seeing. I assure you, Evgenia Dmitrievna, any blind person orients himself as well as you. That’s not the main thing, you know, it’s trivial. It’s much easier than you think. After all, no two doors sound and no two rooms smell alike. Believe me, all it takes is a rustle, the creak of a floorboard, a cough, to know the size of the room, if it’s a strange one, and whether anyone’s in it, if it’s your own. Empty and filled spaces sound different. It’s easy to know when you’re approaching objects by the reverse flow of air on your face, so it’s absolutely impossible to run into a wall or a closed door. Evgenia Dmitrievna, I can immediately determine for you even a detail as small as whether a room is dusty or clean. Do you want me to tell you what you’re seeing now? I just have to snap my fingers. Permit me. The curtains are drawn. The lamp over your bed is on—all it takes is holding your hand out to feel the warmth. There’s a fresh newspaper and flowers on the table. Here there’s an unmade bed. And the marvelous smell of perfume, eau de cologne, and lipstick is coming from over there. You’re wearing a skirt but no blouse yet. It’s reckless to change clothes in the presence of a blind man, Evgenia Dmitrievna.

  What’s happened to you, kind Alexei Pavlovich? I wouldn’t recognize you. Where is your caution and prudence? How can you do such rash and risky things? It was a miracle your message didn’t reach my father, since he always collects the mail. Only today, as if sensing something, out of the blue, I woke at daybreak and lay there for a long time listening to the wall clock and watching it swing on its stem toward the cupboard, but never quite all the way. Then some unconscious alarm, some inexplicable force, made me get up, get dressed, and go down for the mail. The clumps of snow—what the mailman left behind—still hadn’t melted on the steps in the vestibule. I opened the box: papa’s Gazette, some ads, and suddenly the Swallow’s Nest floats from Crimea to the floor. Addressed in block letters, so he wouldn’t recognize the handwriting, and instead of text, stamp-cancelled emptiness. Gasping from joy, I thought, but sensed with horror, that there was no happiness in this; on the contrary, the blank card held something humiliating, and I loved you in a completely different way. I put the newspaper and ads back, but I folded your little nest in two, slipped it in my pocket, and went back. Everyone was up by then. I think I wrote you before about Roman, the blind man and his mama dreaming of the conservatory. At the home where he used to live, it turns out, their favorite game was gorodki. One person sets up a figure, claps his hands, and runs back, while the other throws a bat. Remember that stuffed leopard cat in father’s study? Roman touched it and said it was a squirrel. Outside, I stopped him for a minute and went to buy ice cream, but he kept talking to me the whole time—because of the street noise he hadn’t realized he was standing there alone. He asked me to teach him chess, but he just couldn’t remember the p
ositions and kept running his fingers over the pieces. If the scissors weren’t in the sideboard, he’d raise a scandal for his mother Mika—he calls her Mirra Alexandrovna. For that matter, he calls me Evgenia Dmitrievna instead of Zhenya. Mika came to me and asked me to put everything back where it was, and I explained that the position things happened to be in on the day of their arrival was by no means set in stone. I come home and lock myself into my room just so I won’t see him. I can’t stand to watch him constantly rubbing his stuck eyelids with his fist and digging snot out with a toothpick and licking it off. You can’t go into the bathroom after him without a burning match. Mika brought us theater tickets. At the same time she laughed, turning to my father: “Every woman is a bit of a Traviata, isn’t that so?” I spent half the day getting ready, but when it was time to go I still wasn’t ready. Roman, sleek, wearing gleaming boots and smelling of Papa’s cologne, was sitting in the hall by the door. Mika kept checking in on me every other minute. “Zhenya dear, let me help you! Zhenya, please, it’s better to get there a little early and wait! Zhenya, how long can this go on? It’s time! Zhenya, I beg of you!” I was all set when my coral necklace broke and the stone berries rolled all over the parquet. Mika waved her arms in panic. “Zhenya, just go, I’ll pick them up!” I flew into a rage. “What do you mean just go! I can’t go like this! I won’t go anywhere like this!” I put on the lilac dress you like, or maybe you just said you did and really didn’t notice, and now I wear it all the time. By the time we left it was obvious we’d be late. I said, “It’s not so terrible. Imagine, we’ll arrive for the second act. We’ll have a nice walk, there’s no rush now anyway. If Alfred sings his aria without us, he’s not going to marry her because of it.” Roman was giving me the silent treatment. After the rain there were puddles everywhere, and each one had to be stepped around or over. A simple, “Careful, there’s a puddle,” said nothing, and a few times Roman stepped right in the mud, splashing himself and me. He walked along pale and angry and didn’t utter a word the whole way, while I chattered on. He stepped into a puddle again, stopped, and stated flatly he wasn’t going anywhere looking like this. I said, “Don’t be silly.” He insisted. I couldn’t restrain myself. “What earthly difference does it make to you what you look like!” A shudder ran through Roman, and he turned around and went home. I followed him. And so we returned in silence. Mika acted as though nothing had happened, as though it was all supposed to happen like that, but she wouldn’t look in my direction. I also forgot to say I went to see your mother. She talked about what you were like as a child. I can just see it, the teary-eyed little boy running not to her but to me and telling me that the mean little boys there were catching baby birds, poking twigs through their eyes, and running around with these fluttering garlands, boasting over who had more.