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 immediately. 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.