Genrikh threw himself at the food hungrily, and Nora felt the usual irritation at her father—irritation that had evaporated while he was rushing around making the funeral arrangements. He chewed energetically, and Nora, who had always eaten very little, and always slowly, recalled how, when he had lived with them, she had also watched with annoyance as he wolfed down his food.
How heartless I am, Nora thought. He just has a good appetite.
She plucked a beet out of the salad. Though the beets were delicious, she could hardly force herself to swallow anything. And her breasts were sore; it was time to express her milk.
Old Kolokoltsev, dressed in his at-home attire, his jogging pants, sat on a tiny stool, his bottom hanging over the sides. Raisa led in her daughter, Lorochka, an old maid with an unaccountably intelligent, refined face. Katya’s Ninka also took a seat at the table. Marusya had been on good terms with Ninka. Marusya, who considered herself to be a great expert on child rearing, had helped her in her schoolwork all five years she attended school. When she was small, Ninka had received hand-me-downs from Nora; but by the time she turned eight, she was already bigger than Nora, though she was two years younger. Then some bad girls had taught Ninka to steal, and everything went awry. Marusya had grieved when Ninka was sent off to a correctional institution for juvenile delinquents; she believed Ninka had real potential.
Ninka and her potential sat on a stool, resting her ample bosom on the table. She wanted to talk to Nora about babies: about labor, about breast-feeding. She had given birth recently, too, but she had almost no milk and fed her newborn on baby formula. He bawled nonstop.
As it turned out, all the relatives had gravitated to one side of the table, and all the neighbors to the other. Face-to-face, wall to wall. Nora was already starting to see a play unfold, which could be staged right here. With this very scenery, just as it was. A play with a compelling social critique as a subtext. How they all suddenly start remembering the deceased, and eventually it comes to light that … But what exactly was revealed, Nora didn’t have time to consider, because that woman in the crooked wig from the Housing Management Committee who had been conferring with the neighbors yesterday tapped her on the shoulder: “Nora, just for a moment. Come into the corridor. We need to talk.”
Her father was already there. The woman said that the room would revert to the ownership of the state. Tomorrow they would seal the door. “Whatever you need, you should take today.” Her father was silent. Nora didn’t speak, either.
“Let’s go take a look,” the woman suggested.
They entered the room. Someone had closed the window, but it was still cold. The pillowcase gleamed on the mirror like a cataract. The overhead light had burned out, and the desk lamp cast a meager light.
“I’ll go get a new one,” her father said—this had always been his task—and off he went to fetch a new bulb. He knew where they were kept. He screwed it in. The light blazed, sharp and intense. Grandmother didn’t have a lampshade; that would have been a bourgeois extravagance.
A stage set, Nora thought again.
Her father took a spherical clock, about the size of an apple, off the piano—as a memento of his grandfather, who had been a watchmaker.
“That’s all I need,” he said. “Nora, you take whatever you want.”
Nora glanced around. She would have liked to take everything. Except for the books, though, there was nothing here one really needed for life. It was a tough decision. Very tough.
“Can’t we decide tomorrow? I’d have to sort through things,” she said hesitantly.
“Tomorrow the district police will come over to seal it. I don’t know whether it will happen early in the morning or later in the day. I’d advise you to finish with the business tonight,” she said, and tactfully retreated, leaving Nora alone with the nagging thought that this woman and the neighbors might be in some sort of conspiracy together, wanting to get rid of Nora and Genrikh as soon as possible so they could make off with the spoils.
Genrikh surveyed the room sadly—his first home. He no longer remembered his grandfather’s apartment in Kiev, where he had been born. But in this long room, two windows wide, he had lived together with his mother and father until 1931, his fourteenth year, when his father was arrested.
There was nothing, nothing among these meager belongings, that Genrikh needed. And what would his current wife, Irina, say if he dragged any of this junk home with him?
“No, Nora, I don’t need any of it,” he said, and stomped back to the kitchen.
Nora closed the door gently and even fastened the small brass latch. She sat down in Grandmother’s armchair, and for one last time let her eyes roam about the room, which was still alive, though the person who had inhabited it was not. On the walls hung several small pictures, the size of large postcards. Nora knew them all by heart. A photograph of her grandmother’s brother, Mikhail; an autographed picture of Kachalov, the famous actor; and a photograph—the smallest of all—of a man in a military jacket, with the inscription “To Marusya” grazing his cheek. She didn’t know who it might be. For some reason, she had never asked her grandmother who this gentleman was. She’d have to ask Genrikh. Nora looked at her watch; she needed to get home. Poor Taisia had spent her entire day off at Nora’s house, watching the baby.
Under the window stood a chest woven from willow branches. Nora lifted the lid. It was full of old notebooks, writing pads, piles of paper scrawled all over. She opened the one on top. It looked like a manuscript or diary of some sort. There was a stack of postcards; newspaper clippings …
That settled it—she’d salvage the books and this willow chest. Still looking around, she took the pictures from the walls and stuffed them in the chest, too, along with the slender silver goblet in which Grandmother kept her hairpins, and another one she used for her medicine, as well as a single faience saucer without a cup, which Nora herself had broken at some point in her childhood. Then, from the buffet, she rescued a small sugar bowl, with tiny pincers for lump sugar. Her grandmother was diabetic, but she adored sweet things, and from time to time would break off minuscule pieces of sugar, no bigger than a match head, with these pincers. She then remembered about the washstand pitcher and bowl; but they had already begun a new life in the old kitchen—as common property. Damn it all.
An hour later, when the relatives had all gone their separate ways, Nora and her father together took the chest and the books down to the car. The chest fit into the trunk, and the books were piled up like a small mountain filling the whole back seat and blocking the rear window. Her father drove Nora home and helped her carry all the stuff up to her apartment. He didn’t come inside, but stopped in the front hall. Nora didn’t invite him in. He had been there about two months before, to see the baby. At one time, in these three smallish rooms, he had lived with his family of four: he and his wife, their daughter, and a mother-in-law. Now there were only two living in it.
It’s a nice, comfortable apartment. Good thing they don’t “densify” anymore, forcing people to forfeit space to accommodate strangers, he thought. And, out of nowhere, it occurred to him that it was too bad Mama’s room would revert to the state.
With that, he left for his new home, in Timiryazevka, where Irina was waiting for him.
In a flurry, Taisia gathered up her belongings, kissed Nora on the cheek, stepped over the piles of books strewn about, and left the apartment, looking back to say, “Oh yes, someone named Tusya called, and Vitya called twice, and some Armenian—I didn’t catch his name.”