His father was waiting for him in his office. He was wearing a white uniform. He was sitting behind his desk and his face reminded Valentin of the way his father used to be many years ago. He barely remembered that face any more.
Philip stood up, came to Valentin and put his arms around him. Then he whispered in his ear that his mother was dead.
For a long time Valentin remained seated on a chair in his father’s office. Silent. His father’s words hung in the air, suspended between them. His first reaction was to keep them there, outside, for a little longer. Something enormous had emerged. Something enormous was here and was refusing to leave. No one could remove it.
Then he remembered the baby. He had never thought about the baby as separate from Maria. What had happened to the baby? The likeliest possibility, even now, seemed to be that his mother had taken him with her.
His father told him that the baby was with Boris’s parents. And no one knew where Boris was.
Later, who knows how much later, Valentin said that he wanted to see his mother. With his new face, his father replied that he could see her, but in a place that was not a room and on something that was not a bed.
Valentin understood what he was saying and stood up. The air was so thick that walking through it and breathing were impossible. Valentin could breathe only in short heaves, internally, without taking the air in. He concentrated on trying to make the oxygen inside circulate endlessly.
He was blind to where they were going. He followed only the white blur of his father’s back, trying hard not to lose it. This white thing was going to take him to his mother.
They reached a place, some newly created space, where his mother had also come for the first time.
His father opened a lid in the wall and pulled out a bed, which remained suspended in the air. It was at chest height. The two of them stood, one on each side. His father’s hands slowly unwrapped something that looked like a swaddle. And Valentin saw her.
He saw her in a way he had never seen her before. He had always known that his mother was different from everyone else. That the degrees of difference between other people were much smaller than those between her and other people.
But now, he saw her the way he could see her only once. She was naked and her body shone like an oval pearl on a bed of black hair. This was not the body of a woman, but that of a child. He could not take his eyes off the body, it was exquisite. He lingered at the slender line of her shoulders as if he could find shelter there before approaching the face. He knew that if he looked at the face, it would all be over.
Then he took a deep breath and looked at her. The air turned his heart over and Valentin felt such acute pain that he thought he was dying. It hurt unbearably, and unbearably, his inaccessible mother was now becoming accessible to the whole world.
Maria and her face, pearl-white and smooth, her impossible face. Not rest, but triumph.
Yet something was missing. Something was different. Her eyes were no longer there. Her eyes were closed.
She lay in her shell. Voiceless, sightless.
Valentin closed his eyes, and something shook him. He could see her looking at him with her foggy irises, smiling at him, telling him to go away.
His father wrapped her back in her swaddle. Valentin turned and left. He heard the bed sliding back into the wall with a bang.
He hurried. He did not want his father to catch up with him.
He wanted to go back to Margarita. Back to where he had something to do, for a long time, an indefinite amount of time. Where the three of them, with the baby, would have to continue living with Maria’s absence.
While she was still with them, her absence, which kept everyone at a distance and made her different, used to scare them.
Now, when she was no longer with them, they had to somehow domesticate her absence. Now the three of them had to make it — Maria’s life.
And maybe there were other lives to make, too.
49. Parents
In the kitchen, the old couple was sitting by the fire with the baby when Boris came in. He nodded to no one in particular and headed for the baby.
The old man stood up and tried to block his way. Boris pushed him aside with such force that the old man found himself on the ground.
“Maria…” the old woman tried to tell him something, but Boris had already grabbed the baby, holding him tight to his chest. The baby buried its little head in the fold of his neck and rested there. Boris stood still for a moment. His figure loomed gigantic in the house of his tiny old parents, who looked at him with horror, as if he were the goddess Nemesis come to punish them.
They had stopped talking to each other years ago, and did not exchange any words now. After a while Boris sat down with his legs crossed by the fire, the baby still in his arms. The old woman approached, placed a feeding bottle next to him, and retreated. From the corners of the house came creaking, and then all fell silent. Only the wind whistled through the poplars with a monotonous sea-like sound. But the old woman and the old man, having never seen the sea, remained deaf to the waves breaking in the branches.
The old man stood up and approached Boris. He could not stand in front of Boris because of the fire. He was hardly taller than his sitting son. He put his hand on his shoulder.
Boris’s body shook at the touch, and continued shaking in silence, until the old man kneeled on the ground and put his small arms around Boris’s shoulders, barely able to embrace him.
Boris was weeping for the first time in his life. He wasn’t even sure he knew what was happening to him. The whole world was quaking, shaking off some kind of incomprehensible unmemorable dream. Boris saw himself putting the baby on the ground and taking his father in his arms. He heard himself say, “Dad, where is Mom.” He could not remember ever having spoken these words before. His father stood up without saying a word and disappeared in turn.
Boris took up the baby again. He was no longer crying. He stood up and looked down at the funny doll’s house of a room. The room where he had grown up. What will we do with each other? This is what.
Boris walked out of the house with the baby in his arms and vanished into the darkness. He did not even take the feeding bottle.
Upstairs, kneeling, the old man and the old woman were praying.
50. Fanny
Fanny walked into her mother’s living room, which looked completely changed. It now resembled the cheerful American living room from Married with Children. Mr. V jumped to his feet and hurried to hug her. Her mother glowed and radiated sparkles in a radius of at least two yards.
There was something indescribable about the two of them. No guesswork was necessary — they were happy, they were overflowing with joy. Fanny could not believe her eyes.
The elegant Mr. V. and the plump Madame sat down next to each other on the sofa and took each other’s hand. Then they fixed contemplative eyes on some improbable sitcom on TV.
Fanny could look around at her leisure. Not a single word about their absence for Christmas. Her vigilant mother was literally on another planet.
She noticed that something was different about the room but for a while could not tell what exactly. Then she saw that the paintings on the walls were replaced by unreal-looking though real enough tapestries in wide crinkled golden frames. A ridiculous woven Diana with a swan. And more than half a dozen others.
Fanny could hardly believe it. At least no one could deny that the tapestries matched perfectly with the dreamy couple on the sofa. And the sitcom, for that matter. Fanny knew style when she saw it and this here was style; foreign to her, but style.