He entered a chilly dimness. Everything remained the same as on the day he left. Everything but this: the ideal cleanliness found only in abandoned houses. Solovyov had left hastily six years ago. He was going to take his entrance exams and packed up a suitcase, just tossing aside unnecessary things. Leeza stopped him when he began stuffing everything into cabinets. She said she would tidy it all up. She looked at him, half-sitting on the windowsill. Solovyov remembered the motion of her fingers, touching the boards on the windowsill one by one, as if they were playing a piece nobody could hear.
He walked into the room and drew open the drapes. There were neither spiders nor cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling (they had been swept away by a twig broom wrapped in gauze). Because there were no flies. Solovyov realized that when a fly flew in from outside, buzzing. It was the only living being he had encountered thus far at Kilometer 715. The fly flitted uncertainly around spots on the tablecloth that had not come out in the laundry and then flew over to the doorknob.
A sturdy rag looped around the knobs on both sides of the door: Solovyov’s grandmother had tied rags on the doors so they closed firmly and would not blow open in a draft. She had placed cardboard under wobbling table legs. Glued strips of newspaper to cracks in the glass. This was the inventiveness of old age. The resourcefulness of debility. Of an overall debility, of an inability to change anything in life. When Solovyov left the house after his grandmother’s death, he was leaving that inescapability, too. He was afraid he would inherit it, too, along with the house.
There was a sound of shuffling shoes on the front steps. They were purposely loud, striving to attract attention. That was superfluous in the ongoing quiet. Solovyov turned slowly, ‘Yegorovna!’
‘You came back, my dear one…’
Taking tiny steps, Yegorovna walked into the room and pressed herself against Solovyov. Awkwardly, without bending, he caught her with his arm and felt an old person’s cool tears running down his neck.
‘How’s life treating you, Yegorovna?’
‘Life?’ she pulled away, puzzled and almost offended.
‘We’re living it out! Yevdokia Firsova and I. Remember Yevdokia?’ Her chin, fuzzy with little gray hairs, began trembling. ‘We’re the two waiting for death. Just two at the whole station.’
‘Yegorovna, but where’s Leeza’?
‘Leeza…’ Yegorovna stopped crying, and that was even more frightening for Solovyov. ‘So, Leeza left. Her mother died and then she left. What, you didn’t know?’
‘Where’d she go?’
‘God only knows, probably went to college, like you. A year ago. Maybe more than a year.’
Yegorovna took a rag out of her pocket and blew her nose, ‘Leeza’s mother was very sick so she took care of her. Then when her mother died, I wanted to bathe the deceased for her but Leeza did it herself. Bathed her herself. Buried her here with us. And then Leeza packed up and left…’
Yegorovna was making her way out. She went down the front steps, moving her hands along the railings, but her monotone still sounded. From somewhere far away, tailing off, Yegorovna continued telling Solovyov about Leeza, whom he seemed to have lost forever. Solovyov lowered himself onto his grandmother’s bed and his head sank into a huge feather pillow. It was too much.
The room went dark abruptly after the sky darkened. A vine on the window frame began fluttering and a weightless flower that had been lying by an icon floated down, right onto Solovyov. A lightning bolt struck somewhere far away, beyond the forest. Thunder merged with the sound of a passing train. After the train was gone, he could hear heavy raindrops drumming on the canopy over the front steps.
Solovyov no longer understood if he was watching a thunderstorm as he had done in his childhood or if he was dreaming a thunderstorm while lying on his grandmother’s bed. Or if he was actually in his childhood, lying on his grandmother’s bed and watching a thunderstorm. Bolts of lightning flashed outside the window, in the gap between the half-closed drapes. An oil lamp’s jittery flame was reflected on the ceiling. His grandmother was bowing in prayer, touching the floor. Leeza was standing in the doorway and smiling. She placed a finger to her lips. Water streamed down her hair. This was not a dream. Leeza truly had come. She had drawn closer to Solovyov and was holding his hand.
Solovyov opened his eyes. Yegorovna was sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘It’s potatoes and mushrooms. Eat it while it’s hot.’
She held out a tin dish for him.
‘Thank you.’
He sat up on the bed, looking senselessly at Yegorovna’s back. Leeza was not here. He had woken up with that sense and now could not get used to it. Leeza was not here.
‘It’ll get cold,’ said Yegorovna. She was already at the door.
Solovyov nodded and took the spoon Yegorovna had brought. He had not eaten potatoes with a spoon for a long time so it initially seemed as though the dream was continuing. But the dream had gone.
After his nap, he felt like washing. He went to the well, lowered a pail on the well sweep, and attempted to collect some water. The bottom fell out of the pail when Solovyov raised it, disappearing into the depths with a matte gleam. He found another pail in the shed and fastened it to the well sweep with wire. He collected some water, washed, and tasted the water. The water was just as fresh as when he was a child.
The sun peeked out again and Solovyov was surprised at the length of this day. Its length and variety. It was a quiet summer evening, the kind when he and Leeza would often sit on the front steps. Sometimes go for walks. They could walk on the only street, on the platform, in the forest, or in the cemetery. There were no other places for walks at Kilometer 715. Solovyov put on a fresh T-shirt. He went over to the cabinet with the mirror and combed his hair. He was ready to leave the house.
The street greeted him with absolute quiet. Even these six houses comprising the street had lived their own lives at one time. Their life had not been turbulent, it had simply been life, with shouting over fences, dogs barking, roosters crowing, and the sounds of transistor radios. Now, though, there was nothing but the sound of leaves. The rustle of grass. This was life after a nuclear explosion.
Solovyov stopped next to the platform. In the tall grass, the steps leading to the platform could be divined by their railing. A young rowan tree was growing in the controller’s booth, where his mother had once stood. Groping for the steps with his foot, Solovyov clambered onto the platform. The grass was a little lower there, growing in intricate patterns that stretched along cracks in the asphalt. Solovyov walked over to a bench. In the strictest sense of the word, this was only a halfbench. One of its three cast-iron sections was lying on its side, covered with broken slats. He sat down cautiously on the part that remained standing. Leaned against the back. Closed his eyes.
If he imagined it was his mother in the controller’s booth instead of the rowan tree (the rails had quietly begun humming) and if he imagined the bench was whole and Leeza was sitting on it (he was still not opening his eyes), then what was happening might be declared a quiet summer evening from his childhood. The rumbling of the rails was inaccessible to the untrained ear. This was not yet a rumbling, it was the soundless tension of metal prepared to carry a train that was still far away. But Solovyov heard it. He even knew which train it was. The 20:32. Moscow–Sochi.
Oddly enough, it truly was the Moscow–Sochi train. Despite all the changes in schedules and in the country in general, it passed through the station at exactly 20:32. In actuality, Solovyov was not surprised. Even if attempts had been made to tinker with the schedule, there would have been an obvious need to revert to 20:32. There was no better time to transit through the Kilometer 715 station.