He should have bought them for himself. As a boy, Samuel dreamed of gliding out into the middle of the skating rink with his body bent over the slick ice, racing past all those who turned up their noses at him—past the fine ladies in their muffs, the gymnasium students, the highborn young boys and girls, Marusya Galperin most likely among them. The skates had been buried in a chest for safekeeping, awaiting a new heir. But Samuel didn’t have any more children, and the skates, which had lain for ten years untouched, were passed down to the son of his younger sister Genya.
Now, twenty years later, they changed hands—or rather feet—again, inherited by another relative of the heroic Samuel.
Thus, the first day of Mikha’s vacation culminated in this unexpected gift, and far surpassed any happiness he could ever have imagined. And there was nothing that even hinted of the misfortune to follow.
* * *
On New Year’s Eve, Aunt Genya’s large family gathered around the table. The neighbors who shared their communal apartment had consented to having the festive dinner set up in the common kitchen, rather than in the 150-square-foot room that Genya occupied, together with her unmarried and endocrinologically challenged daughter, Minna, and, for some time already, Mikha. Aunt Genya prepared a sumptuous feast: both chicken and fish. That night, after the memorable repast, Mikha wrote a poem expressing his abiding impressions of the day.
The skates are the finest thing
That ever I have seen in life,
Finer than sun and water,
Finer than fire.
Fine is the man
who is on those skates.
On the table, bedecked as at a ball,
Countless were the dishes,
And one can only wish
One’s kin great victories in years to come.
At first he had “victuals” instead of “dishes,” but thought better of it—it sounded a bit crude.
All week Mikha got up when it was still dark outside and went down to the courtyard, to the improvised skating rink. He skated by himself until the first kids appeared, after sleeping their fill, since they were on school break. He still wasn’t very sure on his feet when he was wearing the skates, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to fend off the other kids if they tried to jump him.
The skates were, of course, the most important event of that vacation. The second most important was Anna Alexandrovna, Sanya’s grandmother. She took the boys to museums.
Mikha had a dual nature: he had a thirst for knowledge, a natural curiosity and excitement that was both scientific and unscientific; but he was also possessed of an inchoate creative fire. He was captivated by Anna Alexandrovna. He was not the only one to fall under her spell, however. The museum outings made a strong impression even on Ilya, who seemed to have more of a technological bent than an artistic one. Sanya, the proud owner of this remarkable grandmother, sauntered casually from room to room, occasionally sharing his thoughts—not with his friends, but with his grandmother. It was clear that in museums, no less than in music school, he was in his element.
Mikha fell in love with Anna Alexandrovna. He would never stop loving her until the day she died. She saw in him a budding man of that stamp she had always preferred. The youth was a redhead, a poet, and during that particular week he even limped a bit, having overtaxed himself on his new skates—exactly like the nearly great poet whom Anna Alexandrovna had secretly loved as a thirteen-year-old girl. This paragon of a man, already full-grown in that distant era, who had the aura of a freedom fighter and would-be martyr, and enjoyed adulation at the beginning of the twentieth century, didn’t deign to notice the lovestruck young lady, but left a lasting impression on some Freudian underside of her psyche. All her life she would love these intense, emotional redheads.
She smiled when she looked at Mikha—a boy of the same breed, but separated by time … and it was pleasant for her to catch his rapturous gaze.
Thus, without being aware of it himself, Mikha’s love was requited. That winter he became a frequent guest at the Steklovs’ home. Countless books, even books in foreign languages, nestled in every nook and cranny of the living room, with its three windows and another half window bisected by a partition wall, under lofty ceilings with ornate plaster moldings, also bisected. An upright piano, ever battle-ready, guarded its music in its depths. From time to time, unusual but intoxicating smells wafted through the room—real coffee, floor polish, perfume.
This must have been what it was like in my parents’ home, Mikha thought. He didn’t remember his parents. His mother had perished during the bombardment of the last train headed east from Kiev on September 18, 1941, when the Germans were already approaching the Podol district. His father died at the front, never knowing that his wife was dead and his son had survived.
In reality, the home of Mikha’s parents hadn’t been anything like Sanya Steklov’s. He was already twenty years old when he saw photographs of his parents for the first time. By some miracle, the photographs had been preserved after the war. He was very disappointed to see that his parents were poor, unattractive people—his mother, with a forced smile on her small dark lips and an extravagant, brazen bust; and his father, squat and corpulent, with an air of exaggerated self-importance. The photographs afforded glimpses of dull, everyday life, a setting that was not at all like the diminutive portion of the smaller reception hall of the former Apraksin-Trubetskoy mansion occupied by Sanya’s family.
On January 9, as the winter break was drawing to a close, they celebrated Sanya’s birthday. Before that it was Christmas, but only grown-ups had been invited to that event. It would be several years before the younger generation would be allowed to take part in the January 7* festivities. Still, there were always sweets left over from Christmas on Sanya’s birthday—candied apples, cherries, even orange rinds that Anna Alexandrovna prepared like no one else in the world. But that wasn’t alclass="underline" they would fold up the room divider, move the dining table closer to the door, and, between the two large windows, set up a towering Christmas tree decorated with ornaments from a box that had been stashed away all year in a storage loft.
Sanya’s birthday party was always a thrilling event. Even girls came. This time there were two of Sanya’s friends from music school, Liza and Sonya. There was also Tamara, the granddaughter of his grandmother’s friend, with her friend Olga; but they were still small, little first-graders, and they didn’t inspire any interest in the boys. His grandmother’s friend was somewhat lackluster, too. Liza’s grandfather, Vasily Innokentievich, though, was marvelous, with his military uniform and mustache. An enigmatic cloud of odors clung to him: cologne water, medicine, and war. Half-joking, he addressed his granddaughter with the formal “you,” while casually calling Anna Alexandrovna “Nuta” and addressing her with “thou.” Vasily Innokentievich was Anna Alexandrovna’s cousin, and Liza was thus some sort of distant cousin to Sanya. They even used those pre-Revolutionary terms, the French cousin and cousine, which also seemed to have been pulled out of the box in the storage loft.
Anna Alexandrovna called the girls “young ladies” and the boys “young men,” and Mikha, discomfited by all these high-society forms of address, was completely at a loss until Ilya winked at him, as if to say, Take it easy, they won’t bite!
Anna Alexandrovna had planned an extraordinary evening. First there was a puppet show, on a real puppet stage, starring Petrushka, Vanka, and fat Rosa. They tussled and fought and exchanged insults, all in a foreign language.