I’ll pull back, there are about thirty yards to the old folks’ house, he roared as she opened her window. Will you be able to turn?
Maria nodded and started the engine. The tires wouldn’t grab. The car started to shake — it obviously needed a push. Big snowflakes floated down from the dark sky. The lights of the other car had disappeared behind the bend and now she saw the man walking toward her. She remained behind the wheel, while he went behind her car and literally lifted its back off the ground and placed it parallel to the road. Maria was able to start the car, and after several yards stopped near his jeep by the house. The dim little lamp by the doorway was lit; Maria got out. The bear man stared at her admiringly when she turned toward him. She grabbed his paw with both hands and shook it in gratitude with unexpected force. Then she walked back, took the basket with the baby, and went inside.
27. Small Matter
Doing any kind of job had its challenges. Where to begin, and how to begin? Valentin unloaded the ten-foot tall Christmas tree in Fanny’s living room and rubbed his hands to warm them up. A white box full of ornaments and garlands lay ready by his feet. He lacked only the gentle little fingers willing and able to decorate the tree. But the tree was so pretty and exuded such a sweet scent of resin that he felt it should stay the way it was. Valentin stood motionless for a moment, wistful, wondering if he shouldn’t leave. The sound of a phone ringing sent an echo through the ice-cold rooms, and suddenly he thought of calling Margarita. He searched for the machine, realizing that every single room, except the living room, had a phone in it.
Typically, he never called Margarita for the simple reason that she never answered, but his despair at the prospect of decorating the tree alone was so overwhelming that he decided to give it a try. To his great relief, Margarita not only answered the phone, but also noted down the address and said that she would be on her way. Naturally, one never knew with her, but he had no choice except to wait.
Valentin walked through the icy vastness of the apartment. He lingered in the library, furnished like a real English library, countryside mansion-style complete with wood paneling, a fireplace, and shelves with books from floor to ceiling. The fireplace, unused, was bright and clean. No surprise. Fanny appeared somehow incompatible with fire. He climbed a small folding ladder and tried to read the titles on the shelves in front of him. It was a series of medical books in Latin. He wondered how these could have ended up in Fanny’s house, and for the first time felt curious about her family. That is, if it was not just money, just for show, as it had seemed to him at first. But maybe there was more to Fanny than one imagined. He walked by the shelves, his hands in his coat pockets. It was too cold to pick up and browse through a book. He admired the leather-bound volumes of Dickens’s and Oscar Wilde’s complete works. But then he got angry — what was the point of having such treasures in this awful cold? It almost seemed like the cold was artificially maintained by who knows what kind of demonic contraption. He started looking for possible indications of its existence and stumbled upon the kitchen, whose size and whiteness simply dazzled him. On top of everything, the windowpanes were covered with frost. The heavy rectangular table in the middle of the kitchen was the only dark, alien spot. You could stuff chickens and legs of lamb on it, you could cut cabbage, knead dough, and who knows what else. But why did Fanny need this kitchen, where everything sparkled in its pristine condition? Another mystery. And her bedroom, what could it reveal? Were there any traces of life there?
Just then he heard the thin crystalline tone of the doorbell. Someone was coming. Valentin headed for the door, and before opening it to see who it was, he was ready to swear it could not be Margarita. But it was Margarita, without her giant bag.
28. Other Secrets
The father of the twins, Margarita and Valentin, was a pathologist; back when Maria still talked, she often asked him about his work. Then, somehow imperceptibly, she stopped. The same thing had happened to their relationship — it had disintegrated into thin air before he noticed any of it. He woke up one day realizing that he had become useless to his own wife and children. Anything he set out to do got done before he could finish it. Anything he tried to say — a suggestion, a conclusion of any sort — was already a matter of common knowledge. The children shyly slipped out of his arms whenever he wanted to take them out somewhere. Maria had taken them there already. No one asked him any questions, and when he asked a question, the answer stood obvious before him, or no one seemed to understand what he was saying. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, but the process had been treacherous precisely in its slowness. He hadn’t been able to put his finger on anything in particular that he could have tried to change or complain about. Simply whatever he thought of doing was somehow already done.
And whatever he undertook in the house, repainting the walls for instance, an occasion he distinctly remembered, inevitably failed because it had been his initiative.
It was then that he started drinking. No one understood what was happening. Like a desperate man staring down the edge of a precipice, he made scenes. Maria dealt with these in her way, too; could you beat your head against a wall that was continuously retreating? He could no longer recognize the world he lived in. When he screamed through tears that his wife didn’t love him, she seemed unable to understand what he meant. When he accused her of wanting to see the end of him, she merely smiled. He asked her repeatedly what she wanted from him, and while asking, he began to believe in his own imaginary answer. He knew that he was instinctively holding onto it as his only chance of survival. But no other answer was offered. He inhabited a world of deaf people, or a world of strangers, isolated like a benign tumor rejected by a body’s immune system. He spent an indefinite amount of time in a state of silent torpor, then tried to liven up by going out, with people who were truly trying to help him. But the house with his children and his wife in it was still there — all around him, but also inside him, and he could not reconcile these two contradictory feelings.
When his state evolved into a conviction that someone could read his mind and did everything he himself meant to do, his brother took him to see a psychiatrist. As soon as he said that his wife had taken his place and now lived his life, the psychiatrist decided to have him admitted for treatment. The medication calmed him down and dissipated his panicky urge to search for a way out. After long months of conversation and interaction with the hospital staff and the other patients, who were disappearing one after the other, Maria’s husband learned two things: first, that it was better to be separated from his wife and children and, second, that for some inexplicable reason, inside him, a problem had engendered itself, and from now on he had to live with it.