In the morning, hungover, sobbing, he brought out hen after hen and spread the white bloodstained chickens on the grass; they lay there, just piles of feathers, and he moved them around and called them by name. The dark forest beyond the fence was filled with the malicious glee of the skunk that had killed all the hens and had waited three months—ages for a small creature—for the owner to make a mistake.
Nimble, quick, and as sensitive as an animal, the teenager turned around, feeling my gaze. I recognized him: it was the teenager pretending to be the ideal Pioneer who met Mother and me at the Palace of Congresses, enjoying his role as usher and his part in the party at the Kremlin. It was his face; but my imagination could not put the Pioneer uniform on him, as if he had outgrown it, like a snake shedding its skin. It had happened a little over a year ago, and I sensed that I was falling behind, unable to let go of last summer, while everything around me was changing rapidly and irrevocably.
I watched the new neighbors for several days as they surveyed and circled their property, chopping it up with their eyes, and I understood that my worry over the gazebo was pointless: they would tear down the gazebo and the house, redo the entire lot and would not stop within its borders.
The dacha association had 150 members who could vote at meetings, they’d been there a long time, and they discussed the poor manners of the new neighbors who had not come to introduce themselves, did not make a polite visit to the association chairman, and who had already filled up the communal dump—an annual fee of a ruble per household—with stuff that belonged to the previous owners. People were angry, and the angriest were ready to go over and explain how things were done and that the old ways had to be respected.
I saw workers carting things away. I watched the first trip out of boredom, the next with growing interest, and then I couldn’t tear myself away.
I wasn’t attracted by the private life that now belonged to no one and was being discarded, but by its absence. In the first cart I had noticed an old radio, just like the one we used to have, a lampshade that I’d seen at the dacha of Father’s friends, and a few other things that were familiar in color and shape. So I decided to wait for the next cart—I was curious.
There were familiar things in the second, third, and fourth cartloads. When they formed the interior of someone else’s house, standing together, shoulder to shoulder, they were hard to recognize as “doubles.” But separated, loaded like corpses on the cart, deprived of mutual support and protection, they lost the domestic charm that gave them individuality and color. All day long, without haste, taking smoke breaks and drinking a pint of vodka over lunch, the workers brought things out—and I knew that if you were to open and gut any of the other dachas, the workers would bring out the same light fixtures, cabinets, refrigerators, and armchairs; that similarity held a vulnerability that the old dacha residents did not recognize.
The time had come for all those things to be worthless, old-fashioned, ridiculous, unneeded, laughable. That would happen tomorrow, or the day after, or in six months, all of a sudden, like a stock market collapse, and the people who bought lot No. 104 were harbingers of that change.
“These are new people here,” the association chairman said to the women gathered at the well with their buckets. “New people, understand? They’ll get used to it, they’ll become like everyone else.”
“New people,” I said, testing the words. “New people …”
STALIN’S INCANTATION
When Father arrived for the weekend, Grandmother Mara demanded he immediately rebuild the fence that faced the street. She wanted solid planks so that when she was on her own property—the dacha was hers—she would never see the new neighbors.
Grandmother Mara was in mourning—the submarine captain had recently died, having been her husband for just a little over a year; but through her grief you could sense her gratitude to him that he had died well, in his sleep, as if he had lived through something very important with her, something he had previously lacked, and then left. Grandmother dressed in mourning, but she was cheerful and worked in the garden, as if she had paid a debt and that gave her strength.
Father was stunned by her harsh demand and launched into explanations, but Grandmother Mara stood her ground: if he didn’t build a tall, solid fence she threatened to sell the dacha the very next day—she shoved a packet of documents under his nose—and she would sell it to people like the new neighbors, show-offs and scoundrels, who had no regard for elderly and respectable people.
Grandmother’s fury had a simple explanation; the day before she’d been out planting strawberries and she had a few runners left of some precious and prolific variety. She went over to offer them to the newcomers, and at the same time learn what kind of people they were. They explained indifferently that they didn’t need the runners, they could buy strawberries at the market, and they had no intention of “mucking around in the soil.” Just before that, Grandmother Mara had shown the new neighbors an example of hard work, digging up long potato rows by the fence in the hot afternoon.
She visited all her friends that evening to tell them the shocking news—the new dacha people weren’t going to plant anything at all! Forgetting that the Latin names the old doctor used had upset her, forgetting their move to Israel, which she used to mock—the hyenas ran off—she now hit all the chords in her changed tune about the wonderful old owners; she promised to write and tell them who had moved into their old place, even though, of course, she didn’t know their address.
She had a very hard time dealing with the strangers’ lack of connection with the soil. That night as I was falling asleep, she was still upset, heavily pacing the room, using a cane, which she never had before. Like a sleepwalker, she kept repeating the same words in a low, mindless voice—What if there’s a war? A war! No, it’s too soon to give up on the potatoes! Only potatoes will keep us fed! Potatoes! They’ve never seen how people plant just the eyes, no they haven’t! Time will tell, if Stalin were still alive, he’d grab them by the ear and toss them over the wall for that kind of behavior!
It seemed that Stalin was just like her, an embittered old gardener or a lame spirit thrown out along with the furniture of the previous owners, circulating under the foundation, creaking the floorboards to make the newcomers feel uneasy. Grimly, as if he himself had grown out of an ugly potato plant, he demanded that they plant potatoes. “Don’t fool with the soil,” as Grandmother Mara repeated.
“Stalin, Stalin, Stalin”—she was roaring like an airplane now, realizing the uselessness of all other words. Just that terrible hooting, owl-like, “Stalin, Stalin, Stalin,” merging with the nocturnal wind, with the scrape of a branch on the waterspout.
Her voice started to change, there were modulations now; it was the voice of a little girl in the dark woods calling for her father, who was cruelly hiding behind a tree, the voice of a nun suffering from the destruction of a sacred place, the voice of a widow many years after her husband’s death whispering his name, forgotten by her lips. Then the various voices disappeared, leaving only one, moaning and groaning, like the blade of a scythe on a sharpening stone.
“Stalin, Stalin, Stalin”—and then everything stopped, no more creaking floorboards and thumping of her stick. A few minutes later I peeked into her room—she was sleeping at the table, her head on her arms, and her head was reflected in the mirror illuminated by the moon, as if she had been trying to tell her fortune, looking into the mirror’s depths, seeking a glimpse of a beloved’s face, a shadow of her intended.
Father did what he always did in these situations: he got a book on do-it-yourself building for dacha owners, took drafting paper marked in millimeter squares, and started sketching various fences, calculating the spacing of the posts, counting the number of posts and boards, cleaning away excess pencil marks with a razor blade, and grumbling that he didn’t have a good ruler, and without one the fence might not be right.
Grandmother’s heart, which had required instant action—hurrying
to buy boards, hammering, drilling, banging in the posts—settled down. She couldn’t stand Father’s measured drawing, and she made a face and told him to forget it—I’ll do it myself later, later—as if he had been moving the pencil point on the part of her herself she could not protect.
Knowing her personality, I assumed that she would start sniping at the neighbors, writing to the district attorney to demand they check where the money to buy the dacha came from, and that she’d soon drive them away with the secret help of her village friends, who could send kids to break windows or saw through the seat in the outhouse toilet.
But Grandmother Mara retreated instantly, as if she sensed her death in those new people. The fence was never built, but it existed in her imagination. For the rest of her life she never looked in the direction of the neighbors’ house or spoke of lot No. 104. Everyone thought she was expressing scorn, but I knew she was suffering. One day we were supposed to go to the store for flower seeds, but when the bus pulled up she scowled and said we’d walk—the bus was on route 104.
For some reason I was sure that the young Okunenko boy (Grandmother had learned their last name) would definitely try to befriend Ivan once he started running into him at the dachas.
But it happened faster than that. Okunenko, who had no idea Ivan existed, who never exchanged a word with any of the dacha people, nevertheless met Ivan on the first day of his arrival, when Ivan was getting out of his car to open the gate. He had predisposed Okunenko to himself, as if he were billiard ball rolling along a hustler’s table, always in the direction of the needed hole.
Ivan did not drop in to see me that day or the next; however I often saw him at the gate of the neighbor’s house and even more frequently saw Okunenko heading toward Ivan’s; sometimes they walked down the road together—a strange couple, resembling a nucleus and an electron.
I was still troubled by occasional ghosts of last summer, I still retained traces of my former adoration, my former attachment to Ivan, but I now preferred the role of aloof and independent observer. Now I could see what an invisible effect he had on me since I last met with Ivan; he had poisoned me, in the unique way to which I was susceptible by my age, with extracts of feelings and emotions that could have killed me but, once the danger was past, also accelerate maturity.
I did not seek a renewal of our friendship; I watched Okunenko hang around Ivan, giving him American cigarettes—Ivan had taken up smoking; watched them drive off in the Volga to Moscow and return happy and excited, as if they had pulled off a successful deal—and perhaps that was the case.
Coming back from the store one day, I saw Ivan heading toward our neighbors’ house. I was going to slow down and avoid him but realizing that I wasn’t expecting anything from Ivan, I kept up my original pace.
It was the first time in a year that I’d seen Ivan up close; he was a completely different person now, as if last year’s hunt for Mister, when like a hypnotist he moved me between life and death, feeding on my delight, fear, and hope, had aged him by three or four years. I alone would not have been enough for Ivan. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been able to deceive me so easily and naturally now, for he had acquired a seriousness that interfered with pretense and deceit.
“Hi,” he said, as if we had parted just yesterday. “How’s life?”
“Good,” I replied. I felt the difference in our ages, which had not seemed apparent last year.
Ivan stood still for a few seconds as if pondering which toy in his pocket to give me; then he seemed to realize something and said, “I’ll drop by one of these days. We’ll go for a walk.”
And one of those days, Ivan kept his promise. A storm was coming from the west, from Borodino and Smolensk, and whirling columns of clouds with imprisoned lightning bolts within them moved toward us. The trees shivered, sagging power lines began to whine, ripples covered the darkened ponds and moved into the reeds. We strode past the railroad station and the freight trains in the sidings. Platforms, cisterns, bunkers with grain, containers—everything seemed filled with anxiety, as if on the eve of war. With the first drops of rain we reached the old House of Culture—patches of plaster falling from the bas-reliefs, cracked columns, worn steps. Opposite, in the scrawny park, stood a propeller on a foundation—a monument to pilots killed in the war; carnations rotted in a jar with green water beneath the propeller.
“Look.” Ivan pointed to the building’s pediment.
I didn’t see anything except for the faded spackling. Something had been written there many years ago, but now there were only vague shadows and runny letters left.
“Just look,” Ivan repeated.
Rain bucketed down on the settlement, bending trees. The drops flew horizontally, harshly, the streets were boiling with water, lightning struck the rod on the boiler plant chimney, and the nearby thunder rattled windows. The rain lashed the pediment, the violet flashes of electricity outlined the shadows of the columns. The shadows fell to the left, then to the right, as if the old building were tottering on its foundation.
Suddenly I saw the inscription appearing from inside the soaked spackling, and in an oval above it, a portrait.
LONG LIVE COMRADE STALIN—the erased letters were clearly visible in the storm’s strange light; so was the profile, hair brushed back and large, predatory nose.
A profile—Stalin was not looking at you, but he could see you, he saw everyone everywhere, his gaze was not a line but a bell jar that covered the universe in all 360 degrees.
LONG LIVE COMRADE STALIN—the storm raged, tossing old crow’s nests from the trees, breaking branches of apple trees, the foamy sap meant for the apples spraying into the air. I thought that long-dead corpses would start rising at the village cemetery from beneath the pyramids with red stars, the metal and wooden crosses, the slabs of granite and labradorite, the forgotten blurred earthen mounds, and the new coffins lowered on top of the old rotten ones.
I thought of Grandmother Mara’s fervent pleas—“Stalin, Stalin, Stalin!”—and understood that after her death she would join the army of these corpses, that the lifetime connection would become an inseverable umbilical cord.
The leader had stamped his name on them—and they responded to that branding, they were enslaved in the afterlife. They were people of his era; I saw that I had lazily united them all by the name Stalin, repeating their own loyalty to him when he was alive, the way serfs were called by their master’s name.
Ivan stood entranced by the rain, which was penetrating deep into the soil, to the roots of the cemetery trees, hammering on the sheet metal, tearing away weather vanes and down-spouts, seeping into the dried-out attics. He was a priest of a new, victorious faith, come into the temple of the old gods in order to sense his own power; he did not sense the awakening of the dead, he heard and saw something else: the spectral letters, the irony of oblivion that allowed the generalissimo to feel how completely he was forgotten—there was nothing but the inscription on the gable that appeared in storms with a westerly wind.
The rain was letting up; I was soaked, shivering, and my face was covered with cold drops.
Ivan was next to me, tired, drained; I understood that he had showed me the most personal and intimate thing he could show another person; he had come across that inscription and held on to it as if it were a jewel, showing it to no one, so as not to turn it into a local attraction.
I wanted to tell Ivan how Grandmother Mara cried out Stalin’s name, but I didn’t think he would understand, he would just laugh at an old woman’s stupidity. He had brought me along because he needed an audience and because he did not want to be remembered only as a deceiver; he could have not bothered about me at all—who cared what the little kid thought of him?—but he liked the opportunity to turn a difficult situation in his favor without having to admit guilt, easily resolving the unsolvable.
He was giving me a gift, allowing me to join in the glory of his power, in the feeling that the future was his, that his time had come, which meant that he’d been
right about everything.
We were back at the dachas, soaked in the muddy streams carrying rubbish and leaves, and we stopped at my gate, opposite the Okunenko house.
“He’s a zero who dreams of standing next to a one, to make ten, and to be able to call that ten ‘us,’” he said, having guessed my secret and most burning question. He was generous, the way people are generous before a final farewell. “But I will need zeros like that. Many of them. He’s the first. You have to respect precedence.”
I thought Ivan was wrong; he haughtily thought Okunenko sought his society and was nothing on his own, he amused himself playing with what he considered an empty man. But I had seen Okunenko at the Palace of Congresses, and I was stunned by his ability to change, I sensed that Okunenko was not a zero. Grandmother Tanya, who liked to play solitaire, explained the meaning of the cards to me, and I thought that Okunenko was the joker, the card that can become any other; the fool who in certain circumstances can acquire the highest power and disrupt the balance in an instant.
“So,” Ivan said. “Go. Go dry off.”
He turned and strode off to his place. I wondered—should I run after him, tell him what I knew about Okunenko? And I stopped. I was interested in seeing what would happen with the two of them. The situation was reversed: now I had Ivan in my power because I knew what he did not. Without feelings of revenge or jealousy, I said: let things be.
The Year of the Comet Page 21
