But then the drill stopped. I was lying on Grandfather’s couch, but the room with the striped wallpaper, with the darling little bay window, was not there. This was some unfamiliar place that resembled nothing else. It was a low-ceiling space illuminated with a dull brownish light that was so weak that the ceiling and the walls disappeared into the gloominess. Perhaps it was not a room at all, but some terribly closed-in space with what resembled a wretched sky overhead. There were a lot of unpleasant things there, but after all these years I don’t want to strain my memory to resurrect the details, because when I think back to then I begin to feel sick.
A multitude of muddy shadow-people filled the space around me. Among them was Grandfather. They moved about painfully and aimlessly, squabbling slightly, and paying no attention to me. I didn’t want them to see me. Especially Grandfather. He limped, as he had when he was alive, but he had no cane.
This state of powerlessness and sadness was so heavy, so contrary to life, that I guessed that this was death. As soon as I thought that, I saw myself behind our house in Troparevo on a bright summer afternoon with patches of sun and shadow. A large poplar toppled by a recent tornado lay across the path, and I walked along it, stepping over broken branches, slipping on the damp trunk, and inhaling the strong scent of withering foliage. Everything was slightly spongy: the tree trunk under my slight weight and the layers of decaying foliage. A dream inverted: from there to here.
Here, in the place where I was, there was no real light and no shadows. There, behind the Troparevo house, where the fallen tree lay, where the sole of my shoe slid along the velvety tree trunk, there were shadows, and spots of light, and an immeasurable wealth of shades of colors. Here everything was unfixed and brown, but real. There everything was unreal. Here there were no shadows. Darkness doesn’t have shadows. Shadows are possible only where there is light . . .
I lay as if paralyzed, unable even to move my lips. I wanted to cross myself, as Grandmother had taught me, but I was sure that I could not even lift my hand. But my arm lifted easily, and I made the sign of the cross and recited “Our Father” . . .
A man in a clay mask resembling an ordinary oven pot approached me. Through the clay eye slits in his mask he stared at me with bright blue eyes. These eyes were the only thing that had any color. The man sneered.
My prayer hung tangibly over my head. Not that it was weak. It just did not go anywhere. It was cancelled. This dark place was located in some place far away from God’s world, in a solitude so unimaginable that light did not penetrate it, and I realized that prayer without light is like fish without water—dead . . .
I could hear the buzz of a conversation—sad, decayed, and deprived of any sense. Nothing but lethargic irritation, a languid argument about nothing. And Grandfather’s voice: I ORDERED, you ORDERED, I did not ORDER . . . This “ORDERED” was a being . . .
The one in the clay mask bent over me and started to speak. I don’t remember what he said. But I remember that his speech was unexpectedly coarse and vulgar, ungrammatical; he chided me, even mocked me. His words, like the brownish clay on his face, also were a mask.
“He can speak using other words; he’s deceiving me. Liar,” I thought. And as soon as I said that to myself, he disappeared. It seems I had exposed him with my thought alone . . .
SHADOWS FLUTTERED HERE AND THERE, AND ALL OF this lasted timelessly long, until I saw that this place had no walls, that merely the thickened gloom created the appearance of a closed space, while in fact this cramped, dark place was enormous, infinite; it filled everything, and nothing existed besides it. It was a maze with no way out. I became terrified. Not for myself, but for Grandfather, and I began to shout.
“Grandfather!”
He seemed to look in my direction, but either he didn’t recognize me, or didn’t want to recognize me, but just continued mumbling, looking at me with his faded brown eyes: I ORDERED, he ORDERED . . .
Suddenly everything shifted and began to slip away. Like the shadow of a cloud across a field, the dark space began to move off, and I saw first a part of the wall in its striped wallpaper, then all of Grandfather’s room in the gray predawn gloom.
I had not awoken, I simply was not asleep. The morning gloom, depressing and unpleasant on ordinary days, now seemed a live pearl color full of promise, because even the nighttime gloom of this, our world, is a shade of our earthly light. What had been shown to me there was the absence of light, a sad and unwelcoming place. That was it, the shadow of death . . . And when the last edge of the darkness floated out of the room and disappeared somewhere to the north, I heard a clear, youthful, indubitably male voice saying:
“The middle world.”
TO THIS DAY I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT WAS . . . OF ONLY one thing am I almost certain: all of that was shown to me because my crippled grandfather with his gloomy face slipped among the crowd of shadows.
Later, when I grew up and read the Gospels and the Epistles of Saint Paul, I returned to this event, to this otherworldly encounter, and thought, Does the apostle know that not all of us change, that some do not change at all and preserve forever their lameness and gloominess, and that what’s behind all this is sin? I do not condemn Grandfather, by no means—who in our family can judge whom? But Mama once let slip that when Grandfather’s case with the train station pavilion that had collapsed was under investigation, his guilt had not been proven, but that the accusation had been that he had used poor-quality materials, which caused the ill-fated pavilion to collapse and the workers to die . . . Theft or bribery . . . The usual Russian story. And so, is it going to be this way forever, with no forgiveness whatsoever? Did the apostle promise deliverance from sin only for those without sin? No, I don’t understand . . .
And what about my memory lapses? What if I forget? I forget so much these days, I probably also forget my sins. So then what’s the point of repentance and forgiveness? If there’s no guilt, then there can be no forgiveness.
Tiny pieces of my life seem to have been washed away as if by water. In their place a blank space has formed, as when you wake up after you’ve dreamed that you had a really important discussion with someone inhumanly intelligent but you can’t pull, can’t drag any of it out into your waking life, and everything important stays in the dream. You get this horrible feeling that there are valuables stored in some sealed room that you can’t get into. Although sometimes you manage to return to an old dream, to the same person you were having the conversation with, and continue the conversation where it broke off. And he answers, and everything is clear as day. But then you wake up and once again, there’s just blankness.
I had one of those blank spots appear where I committed a betrayal. I still remember it, but just the fact. For a long time I haven’t felt any repentance or shame. Apparently, I forgave myself. And the way I committed the betrayaclass="underline" easily, with no pangs of anything, not even hesitation, or thought. I am talking about my dead Anton. There was a poem that was very popular during the war, Konstantin Simonov’s “Wait for me, and I’ll return” . . . At the end it goes: “Only you and I will know how among flames and fire your waiting saved my life . . .” Instead I caused his death by not waiting.
I fell in love with PA not even at first sight, but as if I had loved him even before I was born and merely remembered anew my old love for him. I forgot Anton as if he were just a neighbor, or a classmate, or a colleague from work. Not even a relative. Though I’d lived with him for five years. He’s the father of my only daughter. Your father, Tanechka. I see nothing of Anton or his family in you. You really do resemble PA. Your forehead, your mouth, your hands. I won’t even mention your facial expressions, your gestures, and your habits. But I can’t tell you that PA is not your natural father. So, it turns out that first I betrayed Anton, and then I robbed him, deprived him of his daughter. Can you ever forgive me?