I came home after Platosha. When he asked where I’d been, I told him, though I hadn’t initially planned to. I was afraid the story about the church would reveal to him how serious his condition seems to me. I was afraid that might finish him off completely. But I couldn’t have even guessed that such joy would come to me that I’d be able to share it with him.
He told me:
‘You’re glowing all over. I’m afraid your glow will turn into its opposite if things don’t go well for me.’
To be honest, I hadn’t expected that.
‘Are you proposing that I plead for you and not believe it can come true? Do you remember – it’s somewhere in Chekhov – about the priest who goes to plead for rain and brings an umbrella with him?’
‘You don’t need the umbrella. Just plead.’
He kissed me on the forehead. He’s not right. Not right!
[INNOKENTY]
An ambulance came for Nastya. She had been complaining for several days about a heaviness in her belly but had not allowed me to telephone for a doctor and today it all got worse, so we had to telephone. It’s good we begged with the doctors to take her to the Nevsky Maternity Hospital, where she has been receiving care since the beginning of her pregnancy. I don’t understand why I, a fool, had not insisted on the hospital earlier… Of course I do understand. She was scared to leave me on my own. And I am scared to be left. But what can be expected now? Just the thought of that makes me feel ill. I really should have insisted. Taken her by the hand and brought her to the hospital.
I felt absolutely nauseous when we got to the maternity hospital. I did ask to go to her room and sit alongside her, but no way! Why did you arrive so late, sweetheart, it’s almost night! As if we’d chosen when to arrive… They would not let me past the admissions area. And they took Nastya to a room on a stretcher. What a distressing spectacle when someone close to you is taken away on a stretcher. Ugh.
I sat for about another hour on a couch in the admissions area. People came to look at me: I think the entire hospital staff checked in at my couch. To look: they looked but they did nothing to unite me and Nastya. Not. A. Thing. In the end, they asked me to leave the couch, too: they said they were supposed to close the hospital for the night. I left without uttering a word. Of course I could have told them how bad I felt but I could not find the exact word.
I ended up on Nevsky Prospect a few minutes later. I started going into the metro – I even bought a token – but didn’t ride.
‘Are you going in?’ asked the attendant. ‘We’re closing, by the way.’
Then close. I changed my mind about taking the metro when I pictured being at home without Nastya. After leaving the metro, I headed toward Moscow Station; I decided to sit there a while. People, lots of people, though I had been dreaming of a bright place without people. I didn’t feel like talking with them or even just seeing them. I didn’t feel like knowing they exist. Because after parting with Nastya, it would be better on the whole if they weren’t there. My loneliness was only more pointed because of their presence. I sat in the station for about an hour and a half.
I went out to Znamenskaya Square – I remember when it was still called that, still with the church and the brilliant monument. I imagined the emperor returning to his place, with a stonelike tread. There were cars with flashing lights in front of him – they stopped traffic for his majesty, they had not been expecting him. His horse stepped slowly: the clatter of hoofs, sparks on the asphalt. I returned, so why can’t the emperor return? Both of us are history.
I plodded off toward the Nevsky Monastery. I was tired, my legs were giving way. A kitchen table someone had carried outside stood in front of one building. I sat on it. My feet drummed lightly on it, making a muffled drumming noise. I had never sat like that before on Nevsky. On a kitchen table. I rested a little and walked on.
To my surprise, the entrance to the monastery was open. People were standing by the gate, waiting for something. A minute later, a vehicle with ‘MuniWater’ written on it; showed up and drove through the gate at low speed. I walked after the car, in no hurry. Nobody stopped me; I obviously resembled a MuniWater employee in some way. Maybe with my pensiveness. People who handle water are often pensive.
I hesitated and then decided to go to Nikolsky Cemetery. It turned out the vehicle was headed there, too. It was still driving just as slowly, as if feeling its way, and its headlights grabbed trees and monuments from the darkness. They became improbably three-dimensional, moving in the electric beams, changing places, losing their own shadows and acquiring others’.
Work was in full swing at Nikolsky Cemetery. Illuminated by powerful floodlights, two roaring earthmovers had extracted soil from the graves (so it seemed to me) and piled it in areas of open ground. No, it was not from the graves. When I walked closer, it was clear the vehicles were working on the small road: they had dug a trench. I could also see that overlooking the trench were not just mounds of black earth but also several coffins that had been raised to the surface. Over the long course of their existence, the rows of graves had ceased being rows and some burial places took up nearly half the little road. Those graves had obviously needed to be dug up.
I remembered that Terenty Osipovich’s grave protruded, too, and the thought that it might have to be disturbed in order to extend the mysterious trench – well, yes, that thought flashed. After walking along the trench, which stretched past the second earthmover, I stopped (a pertinent image), as if rooted to the ground: Terenty Osipovich’s coffin was already standing on a small hill of fresh earth. Of course I could not be certain it was actually Terenty Osipovich lying in the coffin but the coffin was hanging over his grave: who would be there if not him?
I walked right up to the coffin. One of the boards on its side had fallen off but the illumination from the floodlights did not reach the gap that had been left. Nothing was visible through it. One could not be convinced that this was Terenty Osipovich without opening the lid. But how could you do that?
As I was pondering, a flexible pipe extended from the vehicle that had arrived. It slithered from a giant reel that rotated with an un-expectedly high-pitched sound. Water lines were being laid through the cemetery at night so as not to disconcert anyone. They neatly placed the pipe in the bottom of the trench. Everyone watched as if entranced while city authorities turned to the departed after having provided a water supply to the living. Without the others noticing, I stepped toward the coffin and laid a hand on the lid’s half-rotted wood. I groped around the edges. There turned out to be a small gap where the lid came together with the coffin. I dug my fingers into it and pulled the lid upward with force.
The force was unnecessary: the lid lifted easily. I again cast a glance at those around me: they were all observing the laying of the pipe, as before. In one motion, I raised the lid slightly and moved it to the edge of the coffin. A person’s remains became visible in the beam beating down from the floodlight. That person was Terenty Osipovoch. I recognized him immediately.
Gray hair was stuck to his skull. Solemn dress uniform, almost untouched by rot. He was, essentially, like this in life. True, he lacked a nose and two black holes gaped instead of eyes but other than that Terenty Osipovich resembled himself. For an instant, I waited for him to appeal to me to go intrepidly but then I noticed that he also had no mouth.