Mikha loved him, too, because he was the male embodiment of everything that attracted him to Alyona: barely discernible wrinkles in the corners of the eyelids that rose slightly upward, small folds pointing downward at the corners of the mouth, the small bones and lightness of movement characteristic of dwellers of the Caucasus. True, Alyona had inherited a delicate pallor from her mother, but Sergei Borisovich, with his admixture of Circassian blood, was dark-haired and swarthy. He was a real man—a father, brother, friend. An antidote to Mikha’s fatherlessness, something he had never yet managed to come to terms with. Sergei Borisovich treated Mikha with kindness, but too much condescension. That was, in fact, how he treated most people—he seemed to look down on them slightly.
Sometimes Alyona, having done her eyelashes, seemed kindly disposed toward Mikha. At those times he would follow her wherever she wished; they would walk around Moscow, her limp, fine-boned hand in his—what intense joy!—and he would touch her hair, breathing in its pungent, feathery scent. He would speak off the top of his head, and from the bottom of his soul, reciting poetry. He had already gone through Mayakovsky, had absorbed Pasternak, and was in those days brimming over with Mandelstam. Brodsky began a bit later with him. She listened, fell silent, hardly deigning to respond. Also with condescension.
Sometimes, during these felicitous periods—there were three such during Mikha’s life in Milyaevo: the winter of 1962, at the very beginning of Mikha’s stay in the boarding school; then in the spring of 1963; and at the end of 1964—she suddenly came to him in the middle of the week, and stayed overnight with him in the utility room that had been allocated to him. Mikha was nearly beside himself with unexpected joy.
The greater these intervals of happiness, the more bitter were those periods when she would cool toward him and withdraw her affection. At those times he would throw himself into his work. His commitments to the deaf children filled his life to the point of overflowing, so that he had almost no time for misery and longing.
The boarders were also lacking fathers, and they clung to the male teachers—Gleb Ivanovich and Mikha—vying for their attention and affection. The older ones were more restrained, but they also gravitated toward the male teachers.
Yakov Petrovich Rink invited Mikha to participate in seminars once a month, trying to involve him in the project to which he had devoted the better part of a decade. He was engaged in a struggle to found a deaf children’s learning center in Moscow, either at the pedagogical college or at the Academy of Medical Sciences. The authorities had already approved the project in principle, but the inertia of the government machine was so great that the span of one human life was simply not enough to create something new, unless it concerned either the military-industrial complex or the cosmos. Rink was counting on Mikha becoming one of the handpicked protégés who could continue his life’s work.
Yakov Petrovich mentored Mikha, gave him studies to read by contemporary French and American researchers, and, finally, advised him to write an article himself—which Mikha did with great enthusiasm. Yakov Petrovich read through the industrious scrawl—the boy could write!
He had bred his students and assistants over the decades for quality—selecting them for size, taste, shade … After three years of voluntary slavery in the boarding school, Rink broached the subject of graduate studies to Mikha—albeit in absentia. But Mikha himself preferred this. He had no intention of parting with his charges.
Mikha passed the qualifying exams for graduate school with flying colors, and was waiting for his enrollment papers. This was in fact just a formality. He was not interested in abstract, theoretical scholarship. Rather, he was looking forward to real, applied scholarly research, such that the results would be immediately evident after several years of implementing the proper methods. The blind did not yet see, the deaf did not hear, and the dumb did not speak; but some of them were learning little by little to articulate words and to enter a world that till then had been closed to them … and what a joy it was to lead them by the hand!
Contrary to all expectation, Mikha seemed to be the most successful of the Trianon members. Sanya had dropped out of the Institute of Foreign Languages and begun his studies at the Conservatory again. Ilya had forgotten all about his intention to study at the Leningrad Institute of Cinema Engineering, assuming that he could teach photography himself if he wished and that there was no need for him to continue his education. He had accumulated friends and acquaintances, and interesting connections, especially in the new democratic human rights movement. Ilya and Mikha continued to share a common interest in poetry. Ilya still made the rounds of antiquarian booksellers, and his collection of rare and valuable books was growing apace.
Ilya was the one Mikha chose to confide in about his fantastic new prospects. Ilya’s reaction was tepid. He had been lucky that day, too. He had a new acquisition. It was an absolute rarity—one of the few remaining copies of Vladimir Narbut’s collection Alleluja, which had been published in St. Petersburg in 1912 and immediately banned by the Holy Synod, condemned to destruction “by means of rending and tearing.”
Mikha opened to a random page—it was indeed “Alleluja,” Psalm 148.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:
Fire, and hail; snow, and vapor; stormy wind fulfilling his word:
Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl …
* * *
Ilya took the volume from Mikha gently.
“That’s a well-known psalm. Let me show you something else. Here.”
It’s a standing bog that sings,
and not a murmuring river!
A rust of ancient red gilding
settles on him. Light is
the long-legged spider’s flight
across the rippling water.
Green roads float away—
but blood flows nowhere.
“But who knows Narbut now? He floated away! And how much else has floated off! Do you hear anything that’s going on, out there with your deaf ones?”
“What are you talking about?” Mikha felt a vague sense of alarm, as though he had missed something important.
“They’ve arrested two writers.”
The inquisitive Mikha was already aware of this arrest, having heard about it on a nighttime radio broadcast. He had forgotten their names. Ilya reminded him. They had sent manuscripts of their books to the West, and they had been published there.
Mikha expressed an interest in reading them. Ilya told him that he didn’t have them, but his friend had a photocopy. Ilya had made the photocopy himself; but he didn’t tell Mikha, just to be on the safe side. He was sitting on a powder keg. He had removed everything from his house, and stored it with friends.
“Only you’ll have to get it from him yourself. You can take it and keep it for a while. I’ll pick it up later, when things simmer down.”
On conspiracy alert, they went outside and called the friend, whose name was Edik, from a pay phone on Pokrovka. Ilya spoke into the receiver in a loud, careless manner:
“Hey, Edik, I left a sausage roll over at your place yesterday. A friend of mine is stopping by to pick it up. Thanks. See you!”
The unmasked writer, who had gone under the pseudonym Nikolay Arzhak, was actually Yuli Daniel, a literature teacher in a Moscow school! Amazing—just like our Victor Yulievich! A literature teacher! And he, too, had fought on the front and been wounded, and was also a philologist!
Mikha was already impressed by the coincidences before he read the manuscript. He went over to get it from Edik, a comical, long-legged fellow. There turned out to be two sausage rolls. One was called This Is Moscow Speaking, and the other was Redemption.