Tengiz never doubted for a minute that he could arrange Nora’s confirmation as art director of the future film. But she had never worked in film before, and she understood that they had their own close-knit professional community, which would hardly welcome an outsider, with no experience in film, into their midst. This didn’t worry Tengiz in the least. “We’ll make you assistant director in that case,” he said. In the meantime, Nora drew sketches that had been commissioned from her in Tashkent for The Snow Queen, feeling amused by the likely disparity in temperatures between the auditorium and the scenes unfolding onstage. But, for the time being, they were leading a happy and unusual life, visiting friends almost every evening, often taking a delighted Yurik along with them, or inviting friends over to their place. Natasha Vlasov came most often, with her eccentric husband, Lyonchik, and sweet Fedya, their son, who was connected to his parents by two umbilical cords. Yurik latched on to Fedya; at Yurik’s age, an older friend was a valuable possession.
The only thing that remained unchanged for Nora was the need to oversee Yurik’s daily homework. By this time (he was already in the fourth grade), it had become very clear that Yurik couldn’t manage it on his own. Actually, even under Nora’s supervision, he did it every which way. The main problem was his penmanship—a misnomer, since it was more like chicken scratch. Every time Nora sat him down to do his homework, the most agonizing task was getting him to do his lessons in Russian. He wrote as if he were seeing a pen for the first time in his life and his goal was to invent some new, nonstandard way of depicting familiar letters. He had a whole pile of unfinished notebooks, abandoned efforts to write legibly. It was seldom that Yurik managed to complete the third page of an assignment well enough to present it to the teacher, though the first and second were more or less acceptable. The teacher, Galina Semyonovna, was horrified by his handwriting, which she conveyed to Nora with inexhaustible zeal, hinting from time to time that Yurik belonged in a remedial school. Now Nora had a lever of influence: “You can play the guitar only after you do your homework.” But the results weren’t very impressive; though he started doing his homework more quickly, it was no better. Maybe this really was the best he could do?
Tengiz, observing Nora’s frustration, shrugged and said, “Leave him alone. Can’t you see? He’s a wonderful boy.”
Whether it was because Tengiz had been able to nudge awake the boy’s slumbering memory of their trip together to Altai, or because Yurik had simply decided to assign the role of father to Tengiz, Yurik stuck to him like a burr. Tengiz responded to the boy’s love with all his heart. Yurik discovered that Tengiz had a great many virtues. To Yurik’s ear, he played the guitar beautifully; he taught him new chords, new tunes, and introduced music into their home that Yurik never knew existed. Tengiz ate with his hands, dexterously and with graceful ease, as only people who grew up in the Caucasus Mountains knew how to do. In his presence, Taisia stopped making remarks about how Yurik should be holding his knife and fork. Tengiz knew how to whistle. Not only that, but Yurik played chess better than Tengiz. At least, when he played against Tengiz, Yurik finally got to know the sweet taste of victory. Vitya very rarely lost, but Tengiz conceded defeat cheerfully and easily, which only added to his merits.
On Sundays, when Taisia gave in to her newfound urge for churchgoing and wasn’t there to restrain Yurik in the hallway by Nora’s bedroom door, Yurik burst into the room and crawled into their bed. Yelping like a puppy and poking them with his knobby knees and elbows, he dived under the covers and nestled his way between the still-sleeping Nora and Tengiz. Yurik, so sensitive to smell, didn’t seem to notice the mixture of sweat and lingering vapors and traces of love, which the lovers had had no time to wash away. At first, Nora tried to discourage her son from these Sunday incursions, and even wanted to put a lock, or at least a latch, on the door. But Tengiz wasn’t in the least shy or embarrassed. He hugged the boy to his chest and tickled him, laying his mouth against his belly and blowing noisily, which sent Yurik into gales of laughter. The game was, of course, an infantile one, but Yurik had evidently not outgrown the need for it.
The punctuated romance between Nora and Tengiz had lasted for more than twenty years, but they had never been completely alone. There was always a third party between them: the play they were staging together. This time, they had no common project, only indefinite plans. Now the third party was Yurik. It was genuine family life, a new arrangement of power, in which, fairly often, Tengiz and Yurik stood together against Nora in deciding the small issues that arose from one day to another. These were mostly trivial matters—potatoes or pasta for dinner, where they would go on Sunday, what to give Taisia for her birthday. But it was life as a threesome, family life, something wonderful and new in their shared experience; and they were happy in it.
Not long before the New Year, Genrikh came to visit. He had already met Tengiz, and liked him; and Genrikh wanted Tengiz to like him, too. From the first moment of their acquaintance, Genrikh had plied him with jokes and stories, laughing and slapping Tengiz on the back, very hail-fellow-well-met. He usually stayed a long time, and didn’t want to leave. This time, though, he was uncharacteristically despondent. Still standing in the doorway, he told them he had contracted some strange illness called narcolepsy. From time to time, he would just fall asleep, all of a sudden, without warning—during a conversation, at a meeting, even while driving. Twice he had nearly crashed, and now he had come to the decision to part with his favorite toy, his trusty blue Lada, polished and gleaming inside and out, his Valya. He was in the habit of giving names to all his automobiles—the previous one had been called Marusya. Genrikh had even made a graph to keep track of all his inadvertent sleeping spells—from the first incident, a year and a half before, when he fell asleep during a meeting of the Academic Council, during a talk by one of his graduate students, right up to the most recent, very dangerous spell, on the road to the dacha, with his wife’s daughter and grandson in the back seat. It was lucky he had ended up in the ditch, and not in the lane of oncoming traffic. In short, this time he was not full of jokes and fun. He looked defeated and doleful, and Nora pitied him.
He’s still a kid—a kid, just like Yurik, Nora thought. Then Genrikh said, “If Yurik weren’t so young I’d give the car to him, rather than try to sell it.” Yurik, who had been preoccupied with fishing out the longest, juiciest strips of Taisia’s home-fried potatoes from the serving dish, suddenly said, without missing a beat, “You could give it to Nora and she’d drive me around,” and went back to eating his favorite meal.
“Now, that’s a thought!” Genrikh said, brightening up. “I’ll teach you to drive myself. I’ll use my own method, and you’ll become a pro in two weeks. All those driving instructors take the wrong approach, you know, like they’re teaching you to read, letter by letter, syllable by syllable. But driving is like swimming, much closer to swimming than reading. You have to feel the movement! When you understand that it’s about the movement of the car, or yourself in it, you’re already a driver. What do you say, Nora? You do want to learn to drive, right?”
Now Genrikh, who had been so gloomy when he arrived, was beaming.
He’s basically so kind, Nora thought. It wasn’t often that she thought good things about her father, but now he was making her feel happy. A kind sort—he really is. He’s showing off a bit, naturally, for Tengiz and Yurik. He wants them to like him. Actually, he wants everyone to like him … But he is a good man.
“Of course I want to. I always did. But listen, Dad, are you sure about this? You won’t miss the car later?”