Anton Ivanovich stared at the window leaf and shook his head. Vasilisa, who had sensed everything instantly, crossed herself. I went over to Grandmother, not yet quite believing that everything was over.
Her death had been as serene as it could be. It was “a Christian death, peaceful, painless, and without shame.” But at the time I didn’t know that’s what it was called. Vasilisa knew.
Grandmother’s face turned solemn and joyous. The pale-pink skin of her head peeked through her bluish-gray hair; her forehead and nose hardened and froze like fine porcelain clay, and her wrinkles smoothed out. Her eyebrows were sable, with tiny brushes at the bridge of her nose. It was precisely at that moment that I distinctly realized how much I resembled her . . . Our white cat, Motya, who had lain at Grandmother’s feet since she had taken to her bed, got up, went over to the edge of the bed, and jumped to the floor.
Anton went to see what had happened to the window leaf. He still hadn’t realized that Grandmother had died.
“The draft shattered the glass,” he mused in wonderment, picking off a piece of dried putty. “There’s a big piece of glass in the back stairwell; I can cut a piece of it for the window leaf . . . Good thing that it’s a rectangle; any of the other window panes could be real trouble . . .”
The window, indeed, was semicircular at the top, with small asymmetrical pieces of stained glass, and almost all the pieces were irregularly shaped. The house was in the moderne style, built by Grandfather in better times . . .
Windows and doors . . . Windows and doors . . . Even a child knows the difference. A door is a boundary. Behind a door lies another space. You enter it, and you yourself change. It’s impossible not to change. While a window merely lends its knowledge for a time. You look, and then you forget. But that’s already concerning my dreams.
That day, the day of Grandmother’s death, Vasilisa’s hour arrived. She knew everything about death. How it’s done. How to bathe, dress, and mourn the dead. What clothes to dress them in, what prayers to read, what to eat and what not to eat. I submitted to her completely, without the least hesitation. And not only I, but Anton too. She took everything in stride, issued instructions, and we did as we were told.
By evening Grandmother lay stretched out on the expanded dining room table, her hands crossed in meek submission across her chest and bound together with an old stocking, her chin propped with a headscarf folded over four times into a halter, and her eyes covered with two large worn five-kopeck coins. Where had Vasilisa dug them up? Had she brought them with her?
An icon lamp burned at the head of the table, and Vasilisa read slowly in Church Slavonic before the icon. I sat on a stool next to the table, saying farewell to Grandmother. I was twenty-four years old. Neither my brothers nor my parents were alive at that point, but I learned of my parents’ deaths only many years later: at that time we still didn’t know what “ten years without the right to send or receive letters” really meant . . .
It was the first death I ever witnessed. I can’t say that I was frightened. I stood in profound respect before this incomprehensible event and tried with all my powers to understand what was taking place: the chasm impervious to reason or emotion that separates living and dead, and especially that instant itself when live and warm Grandmother had metamorphosed into a strange, unneeded thing that had to be removed from sight as quickly as possible and tucked away deep in the earth. Everything Vasilisa did—solemnly and unhurriedly—was soothing, precisely because without all her incomprehensible actions it would have been impossible to remove this cold object. The white shirt, the shroud, and the new leather slippers that Vasilisa had examined so nitpickingly, as if Grandmother really needed this light pair of new shoes with blunt toes and metal-lined holes for laces in order to journey the easy roads that lay beyond the grave . . .
Anton Ivanovich requested that the coffin not be taken to church, but that the priest be invited to the apartment. Everyone was under observation and frightened. Pursing her lips, Vasilisa nodded, and late in the evening on the eve of the funeral she brought to the apartment a wee old man to whom she could entrust the departure of her benefactress. Anton Ivanovich left to spend the night at his relatives’ because he didn’t want to know anything about the whole business: he had a good job at the plant and a blemished family history.
The old man who showed up looked like an ordinary beggar. But when he took his vestments and an epitrachilion from his bundle and donned his Iberian cross, he turned into a priest. With greatest piety he spread a piece of embroidered fabric on the desk, which Vasilisa had washed clean. It was the antimension with pieces of relics: on it he consecrated the Eucharist. That was the first liturgy in my life. We had never been taken to church: that had been Father’s condition when he had allowed the children to live at Grandmother’s. The version of Tolstoyan Christianity in which we were raised after Grandmother returned us—three- and four-year-olds—to our parents totally rejected the ceremonial aspect of religion, recognizing neither church, nor the Theotokos, nor icons, nor saints . . . This time I really wanted to take communion, but wasn’t able to say so. The priest then performed burial rites. After the secret prayer service was over, the little old man slipped away imperceptibly into the night. I never saw him again.
The night after the burial I woke up and went into the kitchen. I don’t know why. Maybe to get something to drink. There in the kitchen in her usual place sat Grandmother in her blue dressy dress with starched lace collar. On the table in front of her there stood a tea glass in a metal holder. She was drinking tea. Everything looked so usual that I began to wonder whether I had dreamed that she had died.
“Tea?” she offered. I nodded. The teakettle was hot. The teapot had a fresh brew in it that was unusually fragrant. I poured myself some tea and sat down next to Grandmother.
“So you didn’t die, did you?” I asked.
She smiled, and her white, even teeth gleamed. She has new false teeth, I thought, but said nothing so as not to embarrass her.
“Die? There is no death, Lenochka. There is no death. You’ll soon learn this.”
I finished my tea. We were silent, and it felt good.
“Go to sleep,” she said, and I went without asking about anything.
I lay down in bed next to Anton, who was mumbling something in his sleep.
And fell asleep immediately. What had that been? A dream? Not a dream? Neither a dream nor not a dream. A third something. I don’t know what to call it. A third state equidistant from the dream world and the waking world . . .
Now, after all these years, I suspect that in addition to this small conversation Grandmother said something else, but the rest of it has not been preserved in my memory. What was preserved for the rest of my life was just my firm knowledge that when you are inside a dream, all of your usual world turns into a dream. Waking reality and dreams: they’re like the front and back sides of the same cloth. And what about that third state? Is it like a top view in mechanical drawing?
Over time, with increasing experience, I have learned how to distinguish one from the other almost infallibly. In the usual daytime world things are totally deprived of mystery and their real content. Although expensive cups get broken and it can be very sad when a favorite thing is ruined, and in our family—out of poverty and family tradition—we used to glue cups back together, repair broken things, darn, and patch coats and pots, still when a thing becomes truly unusable, it gets thrown out.