She’s dressed differently from all of them – she’s wearing a plethora of things: trousers, and over them several skirts, but arranged so that each sticks out from below the next, in layers; and the same on top – multiple shirts, sheepskins, vests. And over everything a grey quilted drill coat, the height of refined simplicity, an echo of a distant eastern monastery or a labour camp. Combined these layers makes some aesthetic sense, and Annushka even likes it; it strikes her that the colours have been carefully selected, though it isn’t clear if the selection is a human one or rather the haute couture of entropy – fading colours, fraying and falling apart.
But the strangest thing is the woman’s head – tightly wrapped in a scrap of material, pressed together by a warm hat with ear flaps – and her hidden face; all you can see is her mouth as it emits a ceaseless stream of curses. The sight of this is so upsetting that Annushka never tries to understand the meanings these curses might contain. And now, too, as she passes by her, Annushka speeds up, fearful that this woman might latch onto her. That in the rush of those furious words, Annushka might even hear her own name.
It’s pleasant December weather, the pavements are dry, cleared of snow, and her shoes are comfortable. Annushka doesn’t get on the bus, instead crossing the bridge and then promenading along the multi-lane highway, feeling like she’s walking down the shore of an immense river with no bridges. She enjoys this promenade, won’t cry until she gets to her church, in the dark corner where she always kneels and remains in that uncomfortable position until she’s lost sensation in her legs, until she’s attained the stage that comes after the stiffening and shooting pains – the stage of nothingness. But now she throws her purse over her shoulder and holds on tightly to the plastic bag that holds the plastic flowers for the cemetery. She tries not to think about anything, and least of all about the place she’s come from. She’s approaching the most elegant neighbourhood of the city, so there are things for her to look at – it’s full of shops here, where smooth, slender mannequins indifferently exhibit the most expensive clothing. Annushka pauses to look at a purse sewn from a million beads, embellished with tulle and lace: a kind of miracle. Finally she reaches the specialized pharmacy, where she will have to wait. But she’ll receive the necessary medications. Futile medications, which only barely relieve her son’s symptoms.
At a covered stand she buys a bag of pirozhki and eats them sitting on a bench in the square.
In her little church she finds a lot of tourists. The young priest who normally bustles around the sanctuary like a merchant amidst his wares is busy now, telling the tourists about the history of the building and about iconostasis. In a singsong voice he recites his teachings, the head on his slim, tall body looming over the little crowd, his pretty light beard like an extraordinary halo that’s slipped off his head and slid down to his breast. Annushka backs out: how could she possibly pray and cry in the company of all these tourists? She waits and waits, but then the next group comes in, and so Annushka decides to find another site for her tears – a little further on there is another church, small and old, more often than not closed. She once went in but didn’t like it – she’d been repulsed by the chill and the scent of damp wood.
But now she isn’t picky, she has to find a place where she can finally cry, a secluded place, but not empty; it has to have the palpable presence of something larger than her, of big outstretched arms trembling with life. Annushka also needs to feel someone’s gaze on her, to feel that her crying is witnessed by someone, to feel it isn’t just addressing a void. It can be eyes painted on wood, always open, eyes that never tire of anything, eternally calm: let those eyes watch her, unblinking.
She takes three candles and drops a few coins in the tin. The first is for Petya, the second for her reticent husband, the third for her mother-in-law in her non-iron housecoat. She lights them from the other few that burn here and looks around and finds a spot for herself on the right side, in a dark corner, so as not to bother the old women who are praying. She crosses herself sweepingly, commencing in this way the ritual of her tears.
But when she raises her eyes to pray, another face emerges from the gloom – the vast face of the gloomy icon. It’s a piece of square board hung high, almost right under the dome of the church, and on it the simple features of Christ, painted in shades of brown and grey. The face is dark, against a dark background, with no halo, no crown; only the eyes glow as they stare straight into her, just like she’d wanted. And yet, it wasn’t this type of gaze Annushka had been thinking of – she’d expected gentle eyes filled with love. This gaze, hypnotic, paralyzes her. Under it, Annushka’s body shrinks. He was here just for a moment, floats down from the ceiling from afar, from deepest darkness – that’s God’s place, his hiding spot. He has no need of a body, just the face she must confront now. It’s a penetrating gaze, driving painfully into her head, as though with a screwdriver. Drilling a hole into her brain. It might as well be the face not of the saviour, but rather of a drowned man who didn’t die, shielding himself against omnipresent death under the water instead, who now, due to mysterious currents, has floated up under the surface, conscious, highly aware, saying: look, here I am. But she doesn’t want to look at him. Annushka lowers her eyes, she doesn’t want to know – that God is weak and has lost, that he’s been exiled and that he is creeping around the rubbish heaps of the world, in its fetid depths. There’s no sense in crying. This is not the place for tears. This God won’t help, or support, or encourage, or purify, or save. The gaze of the drowned man bores into her forehead, she hears a murmur, an underground thunder off in the distance, a vibration below the church’s floor.
It must be because she barely slept last night, because she’s barely eaten anything today – now she feels faint. The tears won’t flow, dry beds where they’re supposed to be.
She jumps up and walks out. Stiffly, straight to the metro.
It feels like she has had an experience of some kind, that something’s got into her, making her tense on the inside like a string on a musical instrument, causing her to make a clean sound, inaudible to anyone. A quiet sound, meant just for her body – a short-lived concert in a brittle acoustical shell. She still listens for it anyway, all her attention turned inward, but in her ears there is only the rush of her own blood.
The stairs go down, and she has the impression that it lasts forever, some people going down, others up. Ordinarily her gaze slips over others’ faces, but now Annushka’s eyes, struck by that sight in the church, can’t manage. Her gaze alights on each and every passerby – and every face is like a slap, hard, stinging. Soon she won’t be able to bear it anymore, she’ll have to cover her eyes like that crazy woman in front of the station, and just like her she’ll begin to shout out curses.
‘Have mercy, have mercy,’ she whispers and sinks her fingers into the handrail, which moves faster than the stairs; if Annushka doesn’t let go she’ll fall.
She sees the silent swarm of people going up and down, shoulder to shoulder, packed in. They glide toward their spots as though on tethers, heading somewhere in the suburbs, to a tenth floor, where they can pull the covers over their heads and fall into a sleep made up of scraps of day and night. And in reality in the morning that sleep does not dissolve – those scraps form collages, splotches; some configurations are clever, you could almost say premeditated.
She sees the brittleness of arms, the fragility of eyelids, the unstable line of people’s lips, readily contorting into grimace; she sees how weak their hands are, how weak their legs – they will not, cannot, carry them to any destination. She sees their hearts, how they beat in time, some faster, some slower, an ordinary mechanical movement, the lungs’ sacs are like dirty plastic bags, you can hear the rustle of exhalations. Their clothes have become transparent, so she watches them wed entropy. Our bodies are poor, dirty, grist – without exception – for the mill.