“I said goodbye, and went out to the entrance hall, clutching the figurine to my chest. And his wife came to see me out—a pretty lady, with large, plump hands. ‘Goodbye, all the best,’ she wished me, and snatched the present out of my hands, pushing me out the door with a supercilious smile on her face. I wasn’t able to say a word. Some story, hmm? But you—don’t suffer needlessly. Keep working, Nora. Romances are very useful for creative people. God forbid that they’re happy. I seem to remember that your grandmother Marusya worked with Kurbas in Kiev in 1918 … She didn’t tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me everything. She only confided in me on occasion. I don’t remember hearing anything about Kurbas. I know that during the war she worked as a literary director in some Moscow theater. She spoke about some famous writer about whom she wrote some essay. I don’t remember the name.”
“I think I know who he was. She may not have mentioned the name to you at all. He was executed in 1937.” Tusya waved, brushing away the bad memories. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story one of these days. Not now. Marusya was an extraordinarily vibrant and extraordinarily contradictory person.”
Tusya was a treasure trove—she knew everything, she remembered everyone. All you had to do was ask. It was her calm equanimity, her deep commitment to her profession and to her students’ lives, in which she invested her unrealized maternal affection and instincts, that distinguished her from the common run of theater artists, who were already a breed apart. They were, it could be said, more humane, with more refined sensibilities, than their colleagues—easel painters, draftsmen, graphic artists.
Were they freer? Nora wondered. Unlikely. The censor laid a heavy hand on all of them indiscriminately. The Khrushchev persecutions, particularly intolerable because of the boorish ignorance of the leader himself, had ended. The underground was stirring, coming to life, and Polish magazines were bringing news from the distant West. In the theater world people began searching for what had been lost long ago. But Tusya was someone who had never lost anything—she herself guaranteed the continuity and linkages of time. This was why her art-school students, past and present, continued to gravitate toward her and seek her out. And this Les Kurbas … Nora would have to find out more about him.
“Not much has survived, Nora. Even I have had to destroy my theater archives, twice over. I’ll take a look, though; maybe I still have something at the dacha.”
Nora knew that Tusya had singled her out among the many who clamored for her attention, accepting her as an intimate. Her mood improved. She went home and made herself comfortable on the divan—to read. She knew that this was how the process began: you read, you go for a walk, then you start to draw. That was just what happened this time, too. It was a strange time, unprecedented—no Yurik, no work, the children’s art class she taught on summer break, her theater friends gone, some on tour, some on holiday trips—a void. Happiness. Even thoughts about Tengiz didn’t disturb her. He had arrived this time with King Lear, and Lear turned out to be more important … It was a question of “unaccommodated man.” As Tengiz said, half your life you accumulate things, and then you begin to cast them off. It wasn’t just about Lear. It was about everyone. You start going backward, to finish the cycle: You’re born, you acquire a multitude of qualities and traits, possessions, fame, knowledge, habits. You become a person, and then you slough it all off. And, finally, you abandon personhood itself. You reach absolute, primordial nakedness, the condition of a newborn baby, the aboriginal state.
Tengiz had put in a brief appearance, then left. Nora quickly threw a few things together and went to Prioksky. Yurik was glad to see her, but five minutes later he was fussing around the puppies again. Their mother was weak, and the pups had to be bottle-fed. It was impossible to drag Yurik away from them; he held the bottle for hours on end. Nora went for a walk in the neighboring forest, a bit apprehensive, since it was a real forest, where you might lose your way. She spent two days with her mother. Amalia had positively bloomed from country life, and she laughed constantly, a high, ringing laugh, about everything and nothing. Andrei Ivanovich walked around with a contented smile on his face.
“What are you smiling about?” Nora asked.
“About everything,” Amalia answered, suddenly very serious, her smile gone. “Learn how, Nora, before it’s too late.”
“Learn what?”
“How to be happy.”
“To be happy about what?” Nora said sternly, sensing all of a sudden that her mother was trying to tell her something important.
“Oh, come on,” Amalia said, with a wave of her hand. “There’s every reason to be happy! I can’t explain it, and I can’t teach it to you. You just have to be happy.” Her face looked very young—perhaps not so much young as childlike.
“Mama, what age do you feel?” Amalia was already past sixty.
“You’d laugh if I told you,” said Amalia, laughing herself.
“Don’t be coy with me—I’m not Andrei. Tell me the truth. We all have our own sense of how old we are.”
Amalia stopped laughing. She thought hard, as though weighing something in her mind.
“I can’t say exactly. But not more than twenty-three. Maybe a bit less. Between eighteen and twenty-three. What about you, Nora? How old do you feel?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it. But definitely not twenty-three.”
It’s a good question, Nora thought. Sometimes maybe even thirteen. On the other hand, she had always felt that she was older than her peers, until she was at least thirty. Then she discovered that they had become older, and she had remained young. Her friends became boring and put on weight. By forty, they had acquired a stolid respectability. I most likely stopped developing, Nora thought. Forty is certainly not the age I feel. But it’s just around the corner. Yes, maybe thirty is what I feel. I was always thirty. And then it’s understandable why at a certain moment I discovered I was older than Mama. She’s between eighteen and twenty-three.
“You’re so intelligent and wise, Nora. How did I ever manage to give birth to such a brilliant daughter?” And again her girlish laughter rang out.
Andrei Ivanovich drove Nora to the station, but this time Yurik came with them. He sat in the front seat, next to the driver. They talked together quietly, so quietly Nora could hardly hear. She had the unpleasant suspicion that they were talking about her. And, indeed, they were. When they got out of the car, Yurik went up to Nora to say goodbye, and handed her a little man made of wood chips. His hat was three tiny pinecones stuck together, and he had large feet and pawlike hands.
“Nora, I made this myself. Sort of. He’s a jester. Grandpa helped just a little. He’s funny, isn’t he? It’s for you.”
So that’s what they were whispering about. The jester. Very apropos … And that silly conversation with Amalia was very much to the point. It was also connected to what Tengiz had said.