Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

The young man covered his mouth with the palm of his hand and very quietly said:

  “To Heaven!”

  The watchman leaned forward, moving his right foot so he was standing more firmly, stared at the young man, and asked sternly:

  “What are you trying to pull? Wanna make a fool of me, or what?”

  The young man gave a smile, raised one of his yellow-gloved hands, waved it over his head, and—disappeared.

  The watchman took a sniff of the air: there was a smell of burned feathers on it.

  “Whaddya know?” said the watchman. He unbuttoned his jacket, scratched himself on the stomach, spat on the place where the young man had been standing, and slowly went back into his guardhouse.

  The Dream

  Kalugin fell asleep and saw a dream, like he was sitting in some bushes and a cop was walking past the bushes.

  Kalugin woke up, wiped his mouth and fell asleep again, and again saw a dream, like he was walking past some bushes and in the bushes the cop had hidden himself and was sitting there.

  Kalugin woke up, stuck a newspaper under his head so he wouldn’t soak the pillow with drool, and fell asleep again, and again saw a dream, like he was sitting in some bushes and the cop was walking past the bushes.

  Kalugin woke up, changed the newspaper, lay down, and fell asleep again. Fell asleep and again saw a dream, like he was walking past the bushes and the cop was sitting in the bushes.

  Whereupon Kalugin woke up and decided to sleep no more, but he instantly did fall asleep, and saw a dream, like he was sitting behind the cop, and the bushes were walking past them.

  Kalugin began to shriek and to thrash around in bed, but this time couldn’t wake up.

  Kalugin slept right on through four days and four nights, and—on the fifth day—he woke up so skinny that he had to take little strings and tie his boots to his legs, so they wouldn’t keep falling off. In the bakery where Kalugin always bought wheat bread they didn’t recognize him, and they slipped him bread that was half-rye. The Health Department, inspecting the apartments and spotting Kalugin, declared him anti-sanitary and good-for-nothing, and ordered the super to toss Kalugin out along with the trash.

  Kalugin the charwoman then folded in two and tossed out—trash.

  Translated by A. L. and M. K.

  Yuri Olesha

  (1899-1960)

  ________________

  LOVE

  Shuvalov was waiting for Lelia in the park. It was noon of a hot day. A lizard materialized on a boulder. Shuvalov reflected: on that boulder the lizard is defenseless, you see it immediately. “Mimicry,” he thought. The idea of mimicry led him to recall the chameleon.

  “Just wonderful,” said Shuvalov. “A chameleon was all I needed.”

  The lizard ran off.

  Shuvalov stood up from the bench in a pique and set off briskly down the path. A fit of irritation had seized him, along with a desire to argue with someone. He came to a halt and observed, rather loudly:

  “Well damn it all! Why should I be thinking about mimicry and chameleons? These thoughts are completely unnecessary to me.”

  He came out into a clearing and sat down on a stump. Insects were flying around. Stems were trembling. The flight-path architecture of birds, flies and beetles was invisible, but one could still somehow make out dotted lines, the shapes of arches, of bridges, towers, terraces a kind of swiftly mutating and second-by-second-disintegrating city.

  “Something’s taken me over,” thought Shuvalov. “My sphere of perception is getting cluttered. I’m becoming an eclectic. Who’s taken me over? I’m beginning to see things that aren’t there.”

  Lelia was late. His stay in the garden stretched on. He kept strolling around. He was forced to concede the existence of many species of insect. A small bug was crawling up a plant stem. Shuvalov removed it and placed it on his open palm. Suddenly the bug’s thorax fluoresced brightly. Shuvalov lost his temper.

  “Damn! Another half an hour and I’ll turn into a naturalist.”

  The plant stems were of various shapes, the leaves, the stalks; he saw blades of grass that were ridged like bamboo; he was astonished at the myriad hues displayed by what is called the turf; the many hues of the soil itself came as a complete surprise.

  “I don’t want to be a naturalist!” he implored. “I don’t need all these random observations.”

  And Lelia was not yet in sight. He was already evolving some statistical conclusions, already establishing some classification categories. He could affirm that in this park trees with thick trunks and trilobate leaves predominated. He was becoming attuned to the chirr of the insects. His attention, against his own will, was being swamped by data that held no interest for him at all.

  But Lelia still didn’t arrive. He grew despondent and irritated. In Lelia’s stead an unfamiliar man in a black hat showed up. The man took a seat next to Shuvalov on the green bench. The man sat there, a little downcast, having placed a pale hand on either knee. He was young and timid. Subsequently it became clear that the young man suffered from color-blindness. The two struck up a conversation.

  “I envy you,” said the young man. “They say that leaves are green. I’ve never seen green leaves. I’m forced to eat dark-blue pears.”

  “Blue is an inedible color,” asserted Shuvalov. “I’d be nauseated by blue pears.”

  “I eat blue pears,” the young man repeated mournfully.

  Shuvalov started.

  “Tell me,” he began, “have you ever noticed that when birds are flying all around you that you get a city, imaginary lines? …”

  “Never noticed,” answered the color-blind man.

  “So you perceive the entire world accurately?”

  “The entire world, except for certain details of color.” The color-blind man turned his pale face to Shuvalov.

  “Are you in love?” he inquired.

  “I’m in love,” Shuvalov admitted manfully.

  “Merely a little color confusion, but the rest is all normal,” the color-blind man said happily. Whereupon he made a condescending gesture to his interlocutor.

  “All the same, blue pears are no joke,” Shuvalov reflected.

  Lelia appeared in the distance. Shuvalov leapt to his feet. The color-blind man rose and, tipping his black hat, began to walk on.

  “You’re not a violinist, are you?” Shuvalov addressed the question to his retreating form.

  “You’re seeing things that aren’t there,” the young man replied.

  Shuvalov lost his temper and shouted:

  “You look like a violinist!”

  The color-blind man, continuing on his way, said something or other, and Shuvalov made out:

  “It’s a dangerous path you’re on …”

  Lelia was approaching rapidly. He rose to meet her, took a few steps. Branches with their trilobate leaves were swaying. Shuvalov was standing in the middle of the path. The branches were rustling. She came on, greeted by a leaf ovation. The color-blind man, keeping to the right, thought: “Well, the weather is breezy,” and glanced upwards, at the tree-tops. The leaves were behaving as all leaves do when agitated by a breeze. The color-blind man saw swaying blue tree-tops. Shuvalov saw green tree-tops. But Shuvalov drew an untenable inference. He thought: “The trees are greeting Lelia with an ovation.” The color-blind man was mistaken, but Shuvalov was even more grossly mistaken.

  “I’m seeing things that aren’t there,” Shuvalov repeated.

  Lelia came up to him, In one hand she carried a bag of apricots. The other hand she held out to him. The world became a different place with amazing speed.

  “Why are you squinting?” she asked.

  “I feel like I’m wearing glasses.”

  Lelia took an apricot from the bag, parted its tiny buttocks and threw away the seed. The seed fell onto the grass. Shuvalov glanced over his shoulder in alarm. He glanced and saw: on the spot where the seed landed a tree had sprung up, a delicate, shimmery sapling, a miraculous parasol-shape.

>   “Something stupid is happening. I’m beginning to think in images. Laws no longer exist for me. In this spot five years from now an apricot tree will have grown up. Entirely possible. That would be completely scientific. But in defiance of all natural laws, I’ve seen that tree five years ahead of time. It’s stupid. I’m turning into an idealist.”

  “It all comes from love,” she said, oozing apricot juice.

  She was sitting on the pillows, waiting for him. The bed had been pushed up against the wall. Little golden wreaths shone on the wallpaper. He approached, she embraced him. She was so young and so light that undressed, in nothing but her camisole, she seemed preternaturally naked. Their first embrace was stormy. Her little medallion flew off her chest and became entangled in her hair, like a golden almond. Shuvalov sank down towards her face slowly, as towards the face of a dying girl, sinking into the pillow.

  The light was on.

  “I’ll turn it off,” said Lelia.

  Shuvalov was lying next to the wall. The corner seemed to narrow. Shuvalov traced the wallpaper pattern with his finger. He understood: this part of the wallpaper pattern, this section of wall he was lying next to, it had a double existence: an ordinary daytime one, not remarkable in any way, simple little wreaths; the other was nocturnal, perceived five minutes before you fall asleep. Abruptly emerging from the background, bits of the pattern grew in size, became more detailed and changed form. On the borders of sleep, returned to the sensations of childhood, he did not protest the transformation of familiar and rational forms, all the more since the transformation was charming: in place of volutes and wheels he saw a goat, a chef….

  “And here is a treble clef,” said Lelia, who understood him.

  “And a cha-chameleon …,” he lisped, falling asleep.

  He awoke early in the morning. Very early. He awoke, looked around him and exclaimed out loud. A blissful sound flew from his throat. During the night the change in the world begun on the first day of their acquaintance had become complete. Morning sunlight filled the room. He saw the windowsill and on the windowsill were pots with many-hued flowers. Lelia was asleep, her back to him. She was lying all curled up, her spine was curved and you could see her vertebrae beneath the skin, a delicate reed. “A fishing pole, thought Shuvalov, a bamboo one. “On this new earth everything was charming and funny. Voices wafted through the open window. People were talking about the colorful pots on the sill.

  He got up, dressed, remaining attached to earth with difficulty. Terrestrial gravity no longer existed. He had not yet mastered the laws of this new world and therefore moved about cautiously, with trepidation, afraid any sort of incautious act might produce a deafening effect. Even simply to think, simply to perceive objects was risky. What if overnight he had acquired the ability to materialize his thoughts? He had reason to suspect this. Like, for instance, his buttons that had buttoned themselves. Like, for instance, when he needed to wet the comb to smooth his hair, suddenly he heard a dripping sound. He glanced around. On the wall, in the sun’s rays, an armful of Lelia’s dresses shone with the colors of Montgolfier balloons.

  “I’m over here,” the voice of the tap emerged from the heap.

  Under the heap of dresses he found the tap and the basin. A rose-colored sliver of soap was there as well. Now Shuvalov was afraid to think of anything frightening. “A tiger came into the room,” he almost thought against his will, but was able to tear himself away from the thought…. Still, he glanced at the door in fear. A materialization did take place, but since the thought had not been fully formed, the effect was displaced and approximate: a wasp flew in the window—it was striped and blood-thirsty.

  “Lelia! A tiger!” Shuvalov shrieked.

  Lelia woke up. The wasp settled on a saucer. The wasp buzzed gyroscopically. Lelia leapt from the bed, the wasp flew towards her. Lelia flapped at it frantically, the wasp and her medallion circled around her. Shuvalov caught the medallion on his palm. They plotted out a battue. Lelia trapped the wasp beneath her crackling straw hat.

  Shuvalov went out. They said their farewells in a draft which in this world turned out to be extraordinarily active and many-voiced. The draft blew open the doors downstairs. It sang like a laundress. It twirled the flowers on the sill, tossed Lelia’s hat about, released the wasp and flung it into the lettuce. It made Lelia’s hair stand on end. It whistled.

  It made Lelia’s camisole billow.

  They parted, and, too happy to sense the stairs down and out into the courtyard…. Yes, he failed to sense the stairs. Then he failed to sense the stoop, the cobblestones; then he discovered it was no mirage but reality that his feet were suspended in the air, that he was flying.

  “Flying on the wings of love,” someone said out of a near-by window.

  He flew upwards, his shirt became a crinoline, a fever-blister appeared on his lip, he flew on, snapping his fingers.

  At two o’clock he arrived at the park. Worn out by love and happiness, he dozed off on the green bench. He slept, his clavicle sticking out from the collar of his unbuttoned shirt.

  Along the path, slowly, hands clasped behind his back, pacing with the gravitas of a bishop and in a soutane-like garb, wearing a black hat and large dark-blue spectacles, now gazing upwards, now downwards, there came a man.

  He approached and sat down next to Shuvalov.

  “I am Isaac Newton,” said the stranger, raising this black hat. Through the dark-blue glasses he surveyed his monochromatic world.

  “How do you do,” Shuvalov stammered.

  The great scientist was sitting upright, cautiously, on tenterhooks. He was listening intently, ears pricked, his left index finger hovered in the air as if summoning the attention of an invisible choir, which was waiting second by second to burst into thunderous song at a signal from that finger. All nature held its breath. Shuvalov quietly hid behind the bench. Once the gravel beneath his heel gave a squeak. The renowned physicist was listening to the silence of nature. In the distance, above the clumps of greenery, as if there were an eclipse, the stars came out, and it grew cool.

  “There!” Newton suddenly cried. “Do you hear?”

  Without looking around he stretched out his hand, seized Shuvalov by the shirt-tail and, arising, dragged him away. They set off over the grass. The immense shoes of the physicist trampled the turf, leaving pale tracks. Ahead of them, often glancing backwards, ran the lizard. They went through a thicket which ornamented the iron frames of the scholar’s spectacles with down and ladybugs. A clearing opened up. Shuvalov recognized yesterday’s sapling.

  “Any apricots yet?” he inquired.

  “No,” replied the scholar in irritation, “it’s an apple tree.”

  The frame-work of the apple tree, its frame-work cage, airy and fragile like the frame-work of a Montgolfier dirigible, showed through a sparse covering of leaves. All was motionless and silent.

  “There,” said the scholar, bending down. The compression made his voice come out in a roar. “There!” he held an apple in his hand. “What does this mean?”

  It was obvious that he was not accustomed to bending over: straightening up, he several times flexed his spine to relieve his vertebrae, his aged vertebral bamboo. The apple rested on the tripod of his three fingers.

  “What does this mean?” he repeated, spoiling the resonance of the phrase with his non-Russian pronunciation. “Can you tell me why the apple fell?”

  Shuvalov gazed at the apple as William Tell must have done.

  “It’s the law of gravity,” he whispered. Then, after a pause, the great physicist asked:

  “You, I believe, were flying today—disciple?” thus the Teacher inquired. His eyebrows rose above his spectacles.

  “You, I believe, were flying today, young Marxist?”

  A ladybug crawled from his finger onto the surface of the apple. Newton shifted his gaze. To him the ladybug appeared dazzlingly blue. He squinted. The insect took off from the highest point of the apple and flew away using wings it had
pulled out from somewhere on its back, as if extracting a handkerchief from the pocket of a frock coat.

  “You, I believe, were flying today?”

  Shuvalov was silent.

  “Pig,” said Isaac Newton.

  Shuvalov woke up.

  “Pig,” said Lelia, standing over him. “You’re waiting for me and you go to sleep. Pig!”

  She removed the ladybug from his forehead, marveling at its steel-blue thorax.

  “Dammit!” He swore. “I hate you. I used to know that thing was a ladybug, and other than the fact that it was a “God’s little cow,” as the folk call it, I knew nothing about it. Well alright, I might also have come to the conclusion that its name was a bit anti-religious. But ever since we met something is happening to my eyes. I see blue pears and I see that that mushroom looks like a ladybug.”

  She tried to hug him.

  “Leave me alone! Alone!” he cried. “I’m tired of this! It’s embarrassing.”

  Shouting this he ran off like a stag. Snorting, in wild leaps he ran, shying at his own shadow, rolling his eyes. Panting, he halted. Lelia had disappeared. He decided to forget about everything. The lost world must be brought back.

  “Good-bye,” he sighed, “you and I will never see each other again.”

  He came to sit down on a slope, on a ridge with an overview of wide open space dotted with dachas. He was sitting at the apex of a prism, his legs dangling down one of its facets. Below him was the round umbrella of an ice-cream vendor, the entire equipage recalling for some reason an African hut.

  “I am living in paradise,” said the young Marxist in tones of utter defeat.

  “Are you a Marxist?” the question came from nearby.

  The young man in the black hat, the familiar color-blind man, was sitting right next to Shuvalov.

  “Yes I am,” said Shuvalov.

  “Then you can’t live in paradise.”

  The young man began to play with a twig. Shuvalov sighed.

  “What can I do? The earth has become paradise.”

  The color-blind man whistled to himself and used the twig to scratch around inside his ear.