Pavel Alekseevich never bothered his wife again. Just as he never again attempted to discuss this new sad state of affairs with her.
That last nocturnal episode, which in no way coincided with Elena’s sense of her husband, in fact changed little: her hurt was so profound that she could no longer do anything with herself. It was as if the phrase her husband had spoken in anger had killed all desire and poisoned the very soil from which the need for tender contact, for caresses, and for spousal intimacy grew.
Over time the hurt neither increased nor decreased. It penetrated her to her depths, and Elena lived with it the same way people live for years with a birthmark or a tumor.
Even outwardly Elena began gradually to change: she lost weight and acquired sharp corners. Her softly rounded movements, the soft angled turn of her head, her catlike manner of curling up in an upholstered chair or on the couch, lightly easing her body into every corner of the furniture—her natural, unique way of moving that had always attracted Pavel Alekseevich—was abandoning her.
The clothes that had once suited her, with the round collars, gathered sleeves, and innocent open necklines that revealed her slightly drooping, but long neck, had by then gone out of style, and she happily recut and resewed all her light dresses for the girls—the one with the tiny flowers, the one with the small wreaths, and the one with the little bouquets—and bought herself two suits (one summer, the other winter) and turned into a school marm.
Sitting next to his wife at family dinner one Sunday, Pavel Alekseevich sniffed the air. Through the crude aromas of Vasilisa’s simple cooking came something new: instead of her former flowery scent, Elena smelled of widowhood, dust, and vegetable oil. Almost like Vasilisa, only Vasilisa’s smell was mixed with either sweat or the stench of old greasy clothing . . . He moved his eyes from his wife to Tanya, and smiled to her: what a delightful little girl she was, her mother’s image, all Lenochka . . . The former Lenochka . . .
The happy period of their marriage was over. Now all that was left was the marriage, like everyone else’s, and even, perhaps, better than most people’s. After all, lots of people survive somehow from day to day, year to year, never knowing joy or happiness, only mechanical habit.
Never, ever—they both understood—would they reenter the happy waters they had sailed for ten years . . .
TIME AND AGAIN ELENA’S GAZE WOULD STUMBLE UPON the puny little girl with the habits of a small rodent—benign, meek, and as pathetic as could be—the unintentional cause of their family’s breakdown, which for Elena was more bitter than all the misfortunes she had endured, including the deaths of her parents, of her grandmother, of her husband, her own deadly illness, and even the war. Living with her was impossible, but so was getting rid of her, sending her back to her relatives, or placing her in a children’s home.
Vasilisa mumbled, as if to the walclass="underline" “And you thought it would be simple? Nothing is simple . . . You’re gonna have to work at it now . . . Yes, you are . . . You can’t just pray that one away . . .”
What sins of Elena’s did she have in mind? Vasilisa Gavrilovna had her own special, complicated way of adding things up, but underlying her method was a strange, even if somewhat silly, truth.
13
Elena’s First Notebook
MY LIFE IN AND OF ITSELF IS SO INSIGNIFICANT AND I myself am so insignificant that it never would have occurred to me to write anything down, were it not for the fact that my memory is getting worse and worse. It needs some sort of external reinforcement: smells, sounds, objects, that elicit memories, pointers, references . . . So let there be at least this little notebook, and when my memory fails entirely, I will be able to look at it and remember. It’s so strange how you grow up and acquire knowledge, and past events take on completely different meaning, depth, a sense of God’s agency, and I want to excavate my own life, like an archeologist, uncovering layer after layer, so as to understand what is happening to me and to my life. Where is it taking me, and what is it trying to tell me? I can’t understand; I don’t know how. The most horrifying thing is that my brain has become like an old porcelain cup: it’s filled with tiny cracks. My thoughts suddenly cut off, lose themselves, and it takes a long time to pick up their trail. Periods when I drop out. Sometimes the image of a person takes on a life separate from the name of its owner. A person you know well, have known for a long time, a loved one—suddenly you can’t remember their name, no matter how hard you try. Or just the opposite: you remember a name, but not the person behind it.
I constantly write notes to myself: don’t forget this, don’t forget that. Then I lose the notes. Not too long ago I found one and had a real scare: it was written in my hand, but, my God, what spelling: a letter left out here, whole syllables out of place.
Deep in my heart I suspect that this is the beginning of some terrible disease. I just wrote that and now am entirely convinced of it. And it scares me. No one in our family had anything similar. Although Grandmother, it seems, had an older sister who reverted to her childhood when she got old. It’s awfuclass="underline" your whole life then becomes senseless. If a person has forgotten her own life—her parents, and children, and loves, and joys, and losses—then what was the point of living? The other day I was thinking about Grandmother Evgenia. And I couldn’t remember her patronymic. I’d totally forgotten it. It made me so upset. And then the next day it just came to me on its own: Evgenia Fedorovna.
I have to write everything down—everything. For myself. And maybe for Tanechka. She’s going through this period of distancing herself. She’s totally preoccupied by her studies, wants to become a biologist, and has grown unusually close to her father. But they’ve always adored each other. Only he doesn’t have as good a sense of her as I do. When her head or her stomach hurts, I know exactly how it hurts . . . And the fact that Tanechka seems not to have any interest in my life and leans more toward her father doesn’t really mean anything. I am sure that she will still need me. And she needs to know everything that I know. After all, it’s not just the big, significant events that are important. Surprisingly, the more distant they become, the more important the small, insignificant events are. Especially dreams . . . I’ve always had dreams, and such powerful ones that now my earlier recollections and childhood dreams seem to be intertwined and I can’t say for sure which image is from the real past and which from a dream. Tanechka needs to learn about all my petty trifles while they still haven’t been lost by my faulty memory. For example, it seems to me that I remember how I first learned to walk: I’m alone in a very large room, propped up against a green velvet sofa. It tickles. Kitty-corner in front of me is a white tile stove, a Dutch stove, and I want to touch it. It is smooth and alluring. I collect my strength. It’s very scary. I’m afraid to walk without anyone’s hand, but it seems to me that I could run over to it. I screw up my face with effort, push off from the sofa, and run. Fly almost. And run palms first right into the tile. It is unexpectedly hot. I scream. A large, mustached woman with a swarthy face appears from nowhere and sweeps me up into her arms . . . Where was that? Probably in Moscow, in Grandmother’s apartment. Mother said that I started to walk very early, before my first birthday. Can a child that age really remember anything? Or was it a dream after all? There’s no one to ask.