Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  There were times when indignation at the impropriety of this constant fondling scorched Nora like fire. This attraction, this unwaning passion for each other of people no longer young, irritated her.

  It’s jealousy speaking in me, Nora thought, bringing herself up short. I should be ashamed.

  Nora was pitiless to everyone, not least to herself.

  Her mother wiped off her tears with the back of her hand. “Well, then, show me my grandson.”

  Nora led the way. From the doorway of the room they could see a little white crib and a baby, lying on his tummy, face turned toward the people entering.

  “Oh my goodness! What a beautiful little boy,” Amalia said.

  She lifted him deftly from the crib, pressed him to her chest, and began snuffling him, patting him gently on his little back.

  “What sweetness, Nora! When you stop breast-feeding him, we’ll take him, won’t we, Andrei? Shall we? Clean air, goat’s milk, freshly picked berries from the forest. The new apple trees in the orchard have started bearing fruit,” she began exultantly, confidently, but then she slowed down, anticipating Nora’s reaction. “Well, Andrei, here we are, already old enough to have our own grandchildren.”

  Andrei Ivanovich was a man of few words; moreover, he stuttered. The only one he didn’t stutter with was his beloved Amalia. She passed the little fellow over to her husband. He held him in one arm, his other arm circled around his wife.

  They aren’t even that old; they look like they’re still in their forties. Strange, strange person—very attractive, a man’s man, and he’s blushing; I can understand why my mother fell for him. What a couple. They were meant for each other; it was almost fated. Just like Tengiz and me. Only Tengiz isn’t Andrei; they’re cut from different cloth altogether. This one looks youthful; his light hair doesn’t show any gray. Tengiz turned gray early, and he’s aging early. Andrei Ivanovich almost looks younger than Tengiz, though he’s at least twenty years older. And they’re both from the country. They grew up on the land, Nora thought.

  They resembled a sculptural composition: Mama and Andrei with the baby between them, their eyes fixed on the little one. Well, after all, why not? She could actually send the boy to live with them for the summer when he got a bit bigger.

  This was the first time Nora allowed herself to consider the possibility of leaving her son with her mother. Then she recalled something she had long ago forgotten—what a lively and cheerful companion Amalia had been in her childhood! She was funny and animated, and all Nora’s friends envied her. Mama had been the best of friends to her. Later, of course, it was Grandmother Marusya, but in a completely different way. Though a boy needs a man around most of all … And Andrei Ivanovich would be just the sort of man he’d need: a former soldier, a woodsman, a handyman, whether building a house or digging a well. Yes, a boy needs a father, of course. Or at least some sort of man in his life. Well, Vitya would never do, that was obvious.

  After they left, Nora made a sketch of them. It turned out well. While she was drawing them from memory, she realized that when they had first met they had still been quite young—not much older than Nora was now. Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine? They could have had their own child. Something hadn’t worked out. At first Amalia had thought about the pros and cons of having a child without a husband. Andrei Ivanovich couldn’t get divorced for a long time, waiting for his children to grow up. When the children did grow up, they didn’t want to see him again after the divorce; they couldn’t forgive him his treachery. Yes, they might try to grab Yurik now and take him away from her. Nora felt a surge of jealousy again—she was not going to give up what was hers—and again she stopped herself. You’re being possessive, Nora; that’s not a good thing. A child needs to have lots of people around who love him. Let them love him.

  By the time he was one year old, Yurik had met all his close relatives. It was only then that Vitya managed to visit him for the first time. By this time, he had grown used to the fact that Nora had given birth to a child, and that the child was his son. It was difficult for Vitya to accept this fact, partly because, while their child was changing from a clump of cells into a disc, stretching out, elongating, growing new tissue and the rudiments of organs, Vitya himself was sunk into depression. When Nora’s belly became convincing, she invited her husband over to announce the imminent advent of the child. Vitya responded to this information with deep inner protest: he was categorically and irrevocably against it. His own life seemed to him to be so tormented and tangled up that he had no wish to bring another suffering creature like himself into the world. Moreover, he considered Nora’s behavior to be morally objectionable. How could she have taken such a step without warning him beforehand?

  He was right, but she had no intention of taking his objections seriously. She had cured herself of the illness of love, which had been, moreover, barren in the biological sense. The birth of a child seemed to her to be a reasonable solution to the problem, and she simply didn’t take Vitya into account in the matter. She did not count on him to be a father in the fullest sense of the word—just a seed bearer.

  Vitya was offended and hurt. These were perhaps the strongest emotions he had felt for Nora during the long history of their sporadic relationship. That entire year was singularly difficult for Vitya. He spent three months receiving treatment in a psychiatric clinic. When he left the clinic, he was even less sociable, and considerably plumper. The doctors, however, considered the period of danger to have passed.

  The call from Nora inviting him to his son’s birthday took him by surprise. He was so taken aback that he informed his mother about it. Varvara Vasilievna, with her complicated and wholly negative feelings about his “so-called wife,” immediately jumped to conclusions: Nora had given birth to another man’s child, and she now wanted to collect child support from Vitya. Nevertheless, she did express a desire to go with Vitya to see her “so-called grandson.”

  Vitya did not accept Varvara’s hypothesis, but they went together to see Yurik anyway.

  Vitya himself was incapable of deception. His weighty cognitive apparatus, in many ways exceeding the endowments of ordinary people, was unable to register certain simple things—lies, cunning, self-interest.

  Nora prepared well for the visit of her husband and mother-in-law. She washed the floors in the apartment, bought Vitya’s favorite cake, and dressed Yurik in velvet trousers that she had refashioned from a cast-off garment of her own. Varvara Vasilievna had contemplated for a long time whether to go see the baby—wondering whether or not it would be good for Vitya. She took out her tarot deck to help her decide, and the cards read a resounding yes.

  Nora was forewarned that Vitya would be coming with his mother. She did not anticipate that any good would come of the visit, but decided that, in and of itself, a visit signified the victory of her indifference over poor Varvara’s long-standing hatred of her.

  The relatives were about an hour late. Yurik stood in the doorway of the nursery and swayed slightly, preparing to toddle over toward the guests in greeting. Vitya almost completely blocked the doorway, so it was hard for Varvara Vasilievna to see around him. Nora was shocked by Vitya’s appearance: the unhealthy pallor of his immobile face, his heaviness, his withdrawn demeanor. A sense of pity rose up in her: Poor thing, he really is ill … Awful. Could she be partly to blame for this? Like Varvara, she had for many years dismissed the idea that Vitya suffered from mental illness; but now it seemed obvious.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” Vitya said slowly, and held out a large, plump hand. Yurik started crying; he had never seen such huge hands, or such huge people. Vitya, no less frightened than Yurik, took a few steps backward. Varvara came to the rescue and held out a little red fire engine to Yurik. Nora had not yet given Yurik any cars. This was the first one he had seen in his life—and it was such a beauty! Nora kept her surprise to herself; she hadn’t expected her mother-in-law to make such an entirely brilliant choice.

  Yurik calmed down immediat
ely. He clutched the toy, banged it against the floor, and very soon discovered its wonderful metal wheels. He made them spin, then tried to stick the toy in his mouth. Varvara was alarmed: “Nora, he wants to eat it!”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Nora said soothingly. “He’s cutting teeth. He keeps trying to scratch his gums. Give him some time to get used to you; then he’ll come up to you by himself. Coffee? Tea?”

  Varvara glanced around her daughter-in-law’s apartment, taking it in little by little. The apartment seemed none too clean by her standards, but very cultured. Throughout all these years, she had only seen her daughter-in-law two or three times, and she had been under the impression that her family was not well off. Now she realized that Nora’s family was most likely gentry. She always made this distinction: either ordinary people, or gentry. Tea was served not in the kitchen but in the living room, which resembled a dining room, with its small oval table and closed sideboard. A real one, not Czech-manufactured … The tea set was old porcelain; the spoons were silver. The cake was removed from its cardboard box and placed on a round plate, with a serving utensil lying beside it. In the next room, the baby banged away with the toy fire engine and gurgled with pleasure.

  They ate cake and drank tea. Nora put another piece of cake on Vitya’s plate. He ate it impassively, if rather quickly. Nora took Yurik by his little hand and led him to the table. The boy looked cautiously at Vitya, but Vitya paid no attention to him. Varvara began to get nervous: This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. They shouldn’t have come. And she shouldn’t have let Vitya come. But she still hoped that the boy would be able to penetrate Vitya’s leaden indifference. Alas, it was no use.

  For almost the first time in her life, Nora was thinking the same thing as her mother-in-law. How Vitya had changed! He was, of course, a genius—but he was a sick one. This could not be denied. What guarantee was there that her son had inherited his genius and not his illness? Or both at the same time? But what could she do? It hadn’t happened with Tengiz, and with Vitya it had happened at the drop of a hat, without any grueling, long-term practice.

  Vitya finished all his cake. By now, Yurik had taken an interest in Vitya’s shoe and was trying to drive the fire engine along it. Varvara pushed the plate with the cake on it away from her son. He didn’t take the hint.

  Varvara began to get ready to leave. She thanked Nora, and praised the little one: “He’s a fine baby.”

  When they were descending the stairs, she repeated it, to her son this time.

  “He’s a fine baby. Too bad he’s not ours.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Vitya asked.

  “Well, just that Nora has a fine baby, but it isn’t yours.”

  After a long pause, Vitya said, “What difference does that make, Mama?”

  Varvara stood still, astonished. “What do you mean, what difference does it make?”

  “Theoretically speaking, it doesn’t matter to me. Practically speaking, there are methods of determining paternity nowadays.”

  And Vitya didn’t say another word until they reached home. As they were entering the building, he said, “I liked the cake.”

  10

  A Froebel Miss

  (1907–1910)

  Marusya didn’t look back. She completely forgot those two sad years when she had sat in the watchmaker’s shop near her father, reading chaotically, unsystematically, and longing for real life—which kept eluding her—to begin. Finally, it did. Now she woke up early and performed her morning ablutions—in cold water, in the Swiss manner. She dressed in the working clothes, somewhat resembling a nurse’s uniform, that all the employees of the kindergarten for the children of poor domestics and wage laborers were required to wear. Then she dashed off to work.

  This daytime shelter had been established, and was now run, by fine ladies who were, for the most part, no longer young. They were the wives and daughters of the wealthy exploiters of the same poor workers. The head inspector of this shelter was Madame Leroux, sent by the Lord God to minister to the needs of proletarian children, and to set Marusya’s fate to rights. Marusya really did do everything at a run, since the children arrived at seven in the morning, and it was her duty to greet them. In addition, when she finished her singing lessons with the youngest and lunched on bread and soup in the small dining room for employees, she took to her heels again—to her classes in the Higher Froebel Courses.

  She had been accepted to the Courses solely thanks to the influence of Madame Leroux—Jacqueline Osipovna, as the employees called the Swiss lady. She was an important figure. She had been sent by the Froebel Society to organize their affairs in Kiev. For five years, she had worked tirelessly and was held in high esteem by the local government heads and their wives. Marusya passed the required examinations without exceptional distinction, but satisfactorily. Most of the other prospective students were preparatory-school graduates, and Marusya had a hard time keeping up with them. There was, in fact, very little real competition; they accepted almost everyone who wished to attend, and who could pay the tuition fees. The fees were not insignificant: fifty rubles a year. Marusya’s brother Mark sent her the necessary sum. The money arrived by a circuitous route—“Jewish” post, as it was called. Some friends of relatives or relatives of friends delivered the money, too late, by which time Marusya was already sick to death of her poverty and of her unhappy fate. On the very day she received the money, she went to the bursar of the Froebel Society, Varvara Mikhailovna Bulgakov, who kindly accepted the money even though classes had already begun.

  Varvara Mikhailovna—a perspicacious woman, a widow with a family of her own, seven children and two nieces, and a paltry pension from her husband—never tired of telling her children, among whom was a future writer, that she could not leave them an inheritance; the only thing she could provide them with was an education. It was not only considerations of a higher order—promoting the education of women—that inspired her to take a job as bursar of the Froebel Society, but also material privation.

  Now Marusya no longer envied either the Petersburg successes of her brother Mikhail, or Ivan Belousov, who had been expelled from the History of Philology Department and had devoted himself completely to illegal revolutionary activity. He sent her subtle hints, vague suggestions, that she should follow the only true path, but she was not tempted. She already had what she had dreamed about—the opportunity to study.

  Her health, never very strong, was restored not by the sanatoriums her parents had wanted to send her to, but by the intensely busy life that she herself had chosen. The migraines, nervous attacks, and minor ailments she had been prone to disappeared of their own accord. The rest of her life confirmed that her health always suffered when she was idle, and instantly improved as soon as she busied herself with a grandiose scheme, such as improving humanity.

  Her studies in the Froebel Courses afforded her such pleasure that the difficulties of daily existence seemed insignificant to her. Many years later, she recalled this time as the happiest in her life. That random, chaotic reading she had engaged in before she entered the Courses proved to be very useful: all the book knowledge she had gleaned from the wonderful encyclopedia or from reading literature found its proper application in the new disciplines. And what disciplines they were! Marusya went to lectures every day: the history of literature, philosophy, psychology, diction and declamation, as well as physiology, zoology, and botany. There was even a class in gymnastic exercises for children. The lectures were read by the best professors, whose names Marusya would recall with pride, or with horror, or be afraid to mention at all, for the rest of her life—but not one of them would she ever forget.

  This information, which she hardly managed to digest, had no value in and of itself, however. It was only valuable insofar as it served a larger purpose, a greater goal—the education of a marvelous, free, new human being. Madame Leroux did not abandon her protégée. Now and then she invited Marusya to her home, questioned her about the teachers
, and shared her own plans with her. Several times, she invited her to the theater, to concerts. She gave her books to read on pedagogy, the most novel and recent trends from Switzerland and Italy. It never occurred to Marusya that Madame Leroux was grooming her to become her assistant.

  Meanwhile, Marusya was becoming ever more interested and involved in her work in the kindergarten. Now she was not only teaching singing, but also putting on little plays with the older children. Jacqueline Osipovna encouraged her in these activities. Marusya had no more doubt that pedagogy was the only worthy undertaking; the revolutionary ideas of her elder brother Joseph, who was stuck in Siberia, were no longer so attractive to her. The ills of society would wither away and disappear by themselves if children were given, according to their abilities, moral guidance and a proper education.

  Ivan Belousov’s educational work was, of course, socially useful; but Marusya’s work with children of the same proletariat that Ivan was trying to enlighten was much more in keeping with her own notions of the social good.

  When he returned home for Christmas, Mikhail found that his little sister had grown up into a young woman, both intellectually and physiologically, and he was somewhat abashed. His former teasing, playful demeanor toward her was no longer appropriate, and there was even some tension in their relations at first. He was used to having his sister hang on to his every word, but now she showed an independence of thought and judgment, and a discomfiting sharpness he was seeing for the first time. He was no longer her idol. She didn’t go into raptures about his poetry, which he no longer wrote for domestic amusement, but with unremitting earnestness.

  She insulted her brother with concise, withering critiques of his poetry: It’s not Blok. It’s not Nadson. It’s not even Bryusov. It was also vexing that this provincial girl, whom he had coached and tried to instruct since childhood, was studying, in his absence, without his guidance, the most important science of all—learning itself.