“Can he smile already?” Tanya interrupted her father.
“I don’t think so. The mimetic muscles begin to function later. As a rule, as I’ve observed, fetuses have rather poor and somewhat chaotic facial expressions. There is, though, one certain expression they have—one of concentration and withdrawal—I know that one very well . . .”
“And what would give him pleasure? What do you think? Maybe I should take him to a concert?”
“Give yourself as much pleasure as you can—I think that will be pleasant for him as well,” Pavel Alekseevich advised his daughter. He could have had no idea in what direction his innocent recommendation would lead Tanya.
13
NANNY GOAT INHERITED A FORTUNE FROM THE ELDEST of her aunts and blew it immediately. More precisely, she blew only the packaging, a pudgy silver Fabergé jewelry box with a pseudo-Greek female profile and three yellow diamonds on the lid. The jewelry box was late moderne, ornate, and the embodiment of a butler’s concept of true luxury. The box’s contents, however, were charming pieces of jewelry of pearl and amethyst, not of great value, but marvelous pieces of work with a pedigree: they had been presents to her great-grandmother from one of the Yusupov princes.
The jewelry box brought Nanny Goat big money, approximately one one-hundredth of what it ultimately went for at an auction in London. But Nanny Goat never found out about that, while five hundred rubles were ooh-la-la what a sum of cash. Handed the money directly by an acquaintance, the director of a commission shop, she took a taxi to the dacha she had rented where her son Misha was stuck with her two remaining aunts and his own grandmother, Nanny Goat’s mother. She picked the kid up, and—paying almost twice the face value—bought train tickets to the South.
Tanya arrived at her place the next day in the morning, having missed her cheerful banter. There were still six hours before the train departed, and Nanny Goat persuaded Tanya to go with her.
“The ticket’s not a problem. If worst comes to worst, we’ll fix it so you can sleep in the conductor’s compartment.” Nanny Goat waved a fat bankroll before Tanya’s nose.
At eight in the evening they were sitting in the train. An hour later, after all the tiny suburban stops had winked good-bye and remained behind, they found themselves luxuriously ensconced in a compartment of their own, having resettled the inhabitants of the entire sleeping car. Among Nanny Goat’s many talents was the ability to set down roots instantly, and blithe to the effort it cost, she had dragged along a whole suitcase of things that, from Tanya’s point of view, were entirely superfluous: little napkin placemats, coffee cups from home, and even a copper crank coffee grinder . . . Tanya’s lean bag held a bathing suit, some underwear, and a spacious dress with enough room for her future belly. She hadn’t even taken a towel, planning to buy one once they got there . . .
It was not quite clear to her where “there” was. One of the Goat’s customers, an actress, who had dropped in the night before to show off her deep, still somewhat reddish, suntan, had sung the praises of the Dniester Estuary, from where she had just returned. Nanny Goat, white and freckled and never in her life ever able to get a real tan, was struck with envy and decided to try the same estuary sun, and now they were traveling to approximately the same places that the exiled Ovid had cursed . . .
Their route took them through Odessa. At a transfer point in Odessa they were supposed to meet the mother of one of Vika’s girlfriends, who would put them up for the night and the next day put them on a bus through Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky to a sandbar between the Dniester Estuary and the sea . . .
They arrived in Odessa toward evening. Waiting for them was a huge—couch-size—woman, Zinaida Nikiforovna, swaddled in flower-patterned silk. Next to her the buxom Goat seemed like a sparrow, and the woman immediately took to them with indulging tenderness. She dragged them down to her “ah-paht-ment,” two connected rooms in a communal apartment that had seen better times. A mirror in a gold-leaf frame occupied the space between two Venetian windows and reflected the ranks of five-pint canning jars of tender fruit boiled alive and intended for speedy consumption. The house burst with food and drink, and before they could wash up, their “open-ahmed” hostess started piling food on the table . . . Little Misha was falling asleep at his plate. Zinaida Nikiforovna waved him off in disappointment and told them to put him to bed. Like all seaside denizens, she had a stash of folding cots and bedding for the innumerable relatives who came to visit. While their hostess made up a cot for Misha in the next room, Goat whispered to Tanya:
“We’re in for it now . . .”
But they had no idea what adventures lay ahead.
Little Misha fell asleep immediately. Zinaida Nikiforovna declared that they should all call her “Mama Zina,” that right now she had to go to work, and proposed that they take a stroll through evening Odessa, because there was no other city like it on earth . . .
They walked out onto the boulevard submerged under a flood of people, taking in the overabundant denseness of the southern evening, the warm air weighed down by cachinnate voices, and the waves of food and beer lightly seasoned with the smell of vomit. Above all this floated the sounds of Odessa-Soviet radio music—crude thieves’ cant, but not without its own charm.
The crowd on Deribasovskaya Street respectfully circumvented Mama Zina, splitting into two streams as they approached her cephalothorax, while Tanya and Vika, moored to her powerful right and left sides, occasionally exchanged glances, barely able to contain their laughter. Never closing her mouth of gold teeth for a second, Mama Zina spoke about literary Odessa.
“We’ll take their Babel and Ilf and Petrov, even Bagritsky and Kataev, and even Margarita Aliger and Vera Inber. If we subtract them, who’s left? Do we need that Sholokhov of theirs? Their Fadeev? Bunin lived here. Even Pushkin spoke on behalf of Odessa! Right here!” she proclaimed, having stopped at the respectable entrance of the Hotel London. “Here’s where I work. We’ll go through the staff entrance.”
It was a sailors’ club. International. Hard currency. A nightclub . . . And Mama Zina was in charge of the beer . . .
“They’re with me,” she said, squeezing into the narrow corridor, to a whitish man who looked like a packing trunk and who had appeared from a dark corner. He nodded. They entered the main room. It was air-raid dark, and the pianist played quietly. Several sailors who had not yet had their fill lazily drank their beer, while two painted working girls sat at a corner table and lushly sucked something through straws.
People spoke quietly, and the place did not smell of fish. Even Mama Zina sort of partly faded behind the bar counter. The beer was domestic, but the money was real—hard currency. Not just anyone got hired for this kind of work, only the most trusted. Mama Zina was precisely that kind—every seam of her, down to her uterus, checked by state security, even before the war, a partisan and a member of the underground. Here too her watchful party eye insured nothing got out of hand. As for the girls, the friends of her daughter who’d split to the capital, let them sit here and take a look, have some fun with the sailors, dance a bit . . .