Pavel Alekseevich sat down at the head of the enormous table and sank his smoothly shaved head in his hands. He reflected . . . There was a multitude of factors that kept people from becoming close to each other: shamefulness, fear of interfering, indifference, and, ultimately, physical repulsion. But the stream flowed in the opposite direction as well, pulling and drawing people to the closest proximity possible. Where was the dividing line? How real was it? Having drawn around themselves their own magic circles—some wider, some narrower—people live in cages they have defined for themselves and relate to their self-designated psychic space each in their own way. Some cherish their imagined cage beyond measure, others suffer from its constraints, and still others seek to admit into their personal space only chosen favorites while excluding those who would impose themselves . . .
The majority of Pavel Alekseevich’s many acquaintances could not tolerate self-isolation, fearing more than anything else that they might remain alone, face-to-face with themselves, and for that reason they were willing to drink tea, chat, and do all kinds of work just not to remain alone. Discomfort, pain, suffering—anything to be in the public eye, to be among people. There was even a proverb: misery loves company. But people who think, who seek to create, and are, in general, worth something, always fence themselves off with a protective band, an alienation zone . . . What a paradox! The most severe insults resulted precisely because people who are extremely close to each other draw the internal and external radii of their personalities in different ways. One man absolutely has to have his wife ask him five times a day why he’s looking so pale. How is he feeling? Another regards even a slightly too attentive look as an infringement on his freedom . . .
“What a strange, singularly strange family we are,” Pavel Alekseevich reflected. “Perhaps because only two of us—Elena and Tanya—are connected by real blood ties . . . The rest of us came together through the whims of fate. What inexplicable wind dropped gloomy Vasilisa at the door, or good-for-nothing Tomochka with her evergreen pleasures . . . Elena is melancholy, Tanechka is rebelling who knows why . . . Each in her impenetrable, separate cage, separate, and each with her own simple secret . . .”
In fact, Pavel Alekseevich had planned to do some work today: to skim through the American journals and write a commentary on a dissertation that had been lying around for two weeks already . . . But his mood was ruined, and he had no desire to read someone’s son’s dissertation. He opened the door of the cupboard—the bottle was where it should be—and peeled off the metal lid . . .
“And I’m to blame for it all, old fool. I’ve hurt everyone: Elena, Tanya, Vasilisa . . .”
22
TANYA FLEW OUT OF THE HOUSE AND RAN ALMOST AS FAR as the Savelovsky train station, then veered off to the right, then to the left, passing through a confusion of alleyways and courtyards, and stopping to look around only at the back entrance to the Minaevsky Market: a dilapidated wooden counter they’d not yet burned and mountains of market trash—everything from rotten vegetables to broken glass.
The sun blazed with its last presunset force. Both her tears and her rage had subsided. Tanya sat down alongside a shed. Nearby three boys of about age seven were playing cards. One of them had a cleft lip; the second—a stump instead of a right hand; and the third, more or less normal, had a face full of enormous pimples. They slammed their cards and cursed. Tanya felt awkward even looking in their direction. In the opposite direction sat a pair of drunks. These unimaginably filthy and strangely joyful beings were dressed too warmly for the summer, in sweat pants and winter shoes that were splitting into parts. Their gender was indeterminable. An empty bottle stood between them. They felt good. A gray loaf of bread and a piece of processed cheese lay on some cardboard, and their satisfaction veritably streamed above them in a pink cloud. They looked at Tanya and exchanged words.
One of the indeterminate beings beckoned to Tanya, and when she set off in their direction, extracted an unopened bottle of cheap wine from a scruffy bag and winked . . .
Their woolen ski hats of a color faded by dirt were pulled over their foreheads so that their hair was not visible, and only after peering at them more closely was Tanya able to determine from the unshaven face of the smaller one that he was a person of the male gender.
“Come on, I’ll pour you some,” one invited Tanya. Now it became clear that the second creature was a woman.
Her face was pitted, and the shadow of an old bruise lay beneath one eye.
Tanya stepped closer. The woman painstakingly wiped a glass with her black hand and poured almost to the top. Tanya took the glass and drank to the bottom. The woman chuckled with satisfaction.
“Ain’t it the truth: he say you woun’t, but I say nawbody don’t say naw!”
Tanya felt like the object of an experiment and laughed joyfully in reply. The wine seemed very tasty, hit her immediately, and for the first time since she had walked out the door of the laboratory a week ago she experienced a sense of relief . . .
“Kind of you, it’s very good wine.” Tanya thanked them, returning the glass.
The drunken woman started. “Dawn’t you drink naw wine, girl!”
She spoke a dialect not from Moscow, with strong “aw” instead of “o.”
“I don’t really drink,” Tanya responded. The man, who had seemed good-natured at first, for some reason turned surly.
“Yah, we know how you don’t drink. Chugged down the whole damn glass without chokin’.”
“Pay naw ’tention to him, he a fool.” The woman winked again, but her companion grew even surlier, slowly pulled out his bluish hand, tried to form it into a fist, but couldn’t—his swollen fingers would not bend and just stuck out to the sides—and thrust it under the woman’s nose . . .
With an unexpected coquettishness she slapped him on the hand.
“Aw, I’m scared now!”
“Watch out or I’ll teach you a lesson . . . ,” he threatened.
“Here,” the woman pulled back in reconciliation and with nimble hand filled the dirty glass and handed it to the little man.
“That’s more like it!” He took the glass with his gnarled hand and drank. Then with a pensive, slow movement he placed the empty glass alongside the untouched food and turned to Tanya.
“Whaddya sittin’ there for: go get some more.”
Tanya obediently got up.
“Of what?”
“Of what!” he teased. “Fine champagne! Get whatever you have enough money for . . . You know where to go? All the stores are closed; you need to go to the wooden house.”
First Tanya bought a bottle of dry Gurdzhaani, but her choice turned out to be wrong, and the little man flayed his arms in indignation. They still drank it, though. Then, almost not making it, just before the kiosk closed, she went back and bought two more bottles of port wine, which turned out to be exactly right. Between the Gurdzhaani and the port a militiaman showed up and chased them all off. They settled down not far away in a cozy blind corner of the courtyard overgrown with burdock between three crumbling structures for which the word “building” would have been a misnomer . . .
Grace streamed down upon them. The couple no longer paid particular attention to Tanya. Over the entire time, except for interjections, the little man uttered only three articulate words: “Summer’s good. Warm . . .”
A luminous bathhouse sweat poured over their filthy faces from under their wool ski caps, while the summer day lingered. This was neither laziness nor idleness, but repose.
For all of her almost twenty years Tanya had never found herself in so happy a place, where work, cares, duty, and haste had been annulled. This alcoholic couple possessed such a wealth of freedom that they could share it with Tanya.