* * *
Sanya would never know what Nuta thought of all of this. And Mikha would never know that Anna Alexandrovna couldn’t stand Alyona—or any others of that subtly drawn type: weak, demanding, despotic, feeble women, with a gift for inspiring tenderness, passion, and love, but who were nearly incapable of responding to it with gratitude and sympathy.
After her death, all Anna Alexandrovna’s close friends were always trying to gauge what her reactions might have been, to reconstruct the words she might have said, apropos of one thing or another.
Nadezhda Borisovna tried to push away her knowledge of the aversion her mother would have felt toward her fiancé, Lastochkin. Only six years later, after their divorce, when Lastochkin would begin the process of trading their large room in a communal flat on Chernyshevksky Street for two smaller apartments, and, to complete the absolutely fair transaction, would do an inventory of Nuta’s property, from the spoons to the bed linens, and then divide it all into two absolutely equal parts, did she shiver, thinking how lucky it was that Mama didn’t live to see this, and that Sanya had left for good …
* * *
But Anna Alexandrovna had also done something terribly cruel, something no one would have expected of her: she had left them all, abandoned them—Sanya, Mikha, Vasily Innokentievich and her daughter, Nadezhda, who had never learned how to move through the world on her own. She had not provided them with any explicit instructions for how to go on living. She had told them how and where she wanted to be buried—but what happened after the funeral? The next day? A month later? A year?
All the boys and girls whom Anna Alexandrovna had guided so tirelessly through life, without their even being aware of it, were suddenly deprived of that light and lighthearted guidance, in which there was a golden mean of wisdom and whimsy. She had both common sense and a sense of contempt for it; a trust in life, and a sharp, critical vision that could size up a new person after only a single, fleeting encounter.
While Sanya sank into a depression after his grandmother died, Mikha underwent, like an insect, the final stage of metamorphosis: the death of Anna Alexandrovna forced him to grow into an adult.
Now, without Nuta, Mikha tried to understand why he had been the one to witness her last minutes on earth. He kept waiting for the mystery to be revealed, so that he would know how to live, how to go on in this world; for he was now the eldest, and there was not a single person on earth who could advise him on difficult questions and quandaries of existence.
There was something very important that Anna Alexandrovna had not had time to tell him, and now he had to find out what it was for himself.
Quietly, fearing to startle away the improbable happiness, Mikha delighted in his blossoming family life, adored his daughter, and trudged around to various places trying unsuccessfully to find a job. The deadlines imposed by the authorities had all passed, and he now ran the risk of being accused of “parasitism,” punishable by banishment from Moscow.
Kusikov, the neighborhood parole officer, came by to urge him on in his search for employment. He was a country boy, with the vestiges of a rural ruddiness and with glimmers of humanity left in his face.
He took a good look around him. He examined Alyona’s graphics for a long time. They were marvelous. Mysterious and enchanting. Noticing his curiosity, Mikha explained that his wife was an artist. The policeman was impressed, and filled with respect for the wispy girl. They may have been poor, but you could see they were cultured. He even wanted to help them out. As if from nowhere, Kusikov was filled with a sense of pity for Mikha and his spindly wife.
He offered to help him get a job as a loader in a fish factory. The manager was a friend of his. Mikha shrugged uncertainly. He’d worked as a loader before, but his eyesight had gotten so bad that more of that kind of work—loading and unloading things in the dark—could do untold damage to his vision. His hand strayed mechanically up to the metal frames of his glasses. Alyona offered the policeman tea. He sat down, his legs spread-eagled on the chair, his sturdy boots planted on either side of it. Maya stared transfixed at the policeman’s cap lying on the table. Alyona placed two pastries on a plate in front of him. He ate only one of them, evidence of his good country breeding.
When he was leaving, Kusikov said he knew of another good job opening for Mikha, working somewhere as a guard. He lamented that the personnel office might not approve it, though, with Mikha’s criminal record.
“How strange our Soviet—or maybe Russian—life is: you never know who will denounce you, report you to the authorities, or who will help you out; or how quickly those roles might reverse. Isn’t that true, Alyona?”
Alyona nodded, her hair falling over her face.
“Yes, I think about that a lot. Everything is so mutable, so unpredictable. There is warmth and sincerity in abundance, and so many good intentions; but they never amount to anything.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Mikha objected.
“But that’s what I mean,” Alyona said, smiling a clever smile. Lately, she had acquired a new, clever smile—much cleverer than she really was.
Two days later, Kusikov took Mikha to a curious establishment, where they hired him as a forwarding agent. He was in charge of sorting and sending out samples sent in by geological expeditions to several other establishments.
In comparison with his work at the school for the deaf, which required all his spiritual and emotional energy, or the camps, which drained him of all his physical strength, this almost meaningless work was remarkable in one sense: it lasted from eight to four; sometimes he was even able to leave earlier in the day. The workday ended when it ended, until the next day. He didn’t have to think about it; his mind, his heart, were free, and he had strength left over. There was an enormous expanse of time that he could spend with Alyona and his daughter. Sometimes he went to the library, where he read up on every possible subject, without his former greedy hunger, allowing every word to penetrate his being—Montaigne, Madame Blavatsky, Lao-tzu …
Then he returned home for a late dinner. Maya would already be asleep. Alyona would be wearing her lime-green sheath dress that outlined her slim body, but had generous bell sleeves. In her fragile hands she would bring in from their communal kitchen a heavy cast-iron skillet loaded with fried potatoes.
The room smelled of cooking oil, a sleeping child, freshly mopped floors, and Alyona’s special scent—cool, and a little sweet. These were the smells of home life, of family and love.
Mikha ate his potatoes in a hurry, while Alyona slowly drank her herbal tea, drawing out the end of the day and keeping the arrival of nighttime at bay.
His former life, with its wrongs and injustices, its stale ideas, and its notions of reform and change, drifted away from him. Sergei Borisovich’s public repentance, though it threw into confusion all of his previously held ideals, to a certain extent justified Mikha’s capitulation. Having chosen between the valorization of some and the betrayal of others, he lived his life in quiet and somewhat shameful disgrace. The act that several months before had tormented him as defeat and apostasy—signing the humiliating document renouncing all social and political activity—now seemed to him to be his only means of surviving and protecting his family.
Everything fell into place again, and even the job as a forwarding agent—a mind-numbing, alienating task—had its advantages. Mikha sometimes had to sort the contents of parcels with all manner of samples: colored clays; sharp, translucent crystals; stones gleaming with veins of metals. The marvelous names of the places where these samples had originated—Maly Storozhok at a tributary of the Lenochka stream; Matiukovka Mountain, part of the Vsevolod-Vilvensky deposits; the Shudi river basin in the northern Urals—caressed his tongue. Mikha once even wrote a poem full of these enchanting geographical names.