So anyway, she went with Panya. That Panya… His mother-in-law wanted to buy another fur coat, squirrel fur, for every day. A lady was selling one—a decent-looking woman, teary-eyed, with a blue nose; I can see her now… She had Panya hold the karakul, she put on the squirrel, turned around—the lady’s trail was cold and the karakul was gone. Panya, where’s the coat? A shriek, tears: Madame, I don’t know what happened, I was just holding it a second ago. They distracted my eyes, damn them! Well, who knows about her eyes, but couldn’t it have been a conspiracy? It was after the war, times were rough, there were all sorts of gangs around, and who really knew that Panya? And naturally the envy, the profound disapproval of people like his mother-in-law, Maria Maximovna, pretty, flashy, dressed warm and rich. And for what reason? You’d think they were living like birds of paradise, she and Pavel Antonovich, but nothing of the sort. Constant tension, anxiety, separations, night work. Pavel Antonovich was a military doctor, a warrior against the plague, an elderly man, complex, quick to judge; terrible in his wrath, and honest in his work. Here was an opportunity to look at a photograph of Pavel Antonovich, the way he was in the last years of his life, insulted, abandoned, wounded by the classic situation: his students moved on, taking the most precious of their teacher’s work, carrying the slightly soiled banner onward without honoring the founder with a single line or a single footnote.
Sergei raised his eyes on high and made out, high on the wall, in the warm silky shadows, a pair of glasses, a mustache—
Lenochka, do you remember Papa? Of course. Maria Maximovna went to the kitchen to get sweet rolls, Sergei leaned over to pat Lenochka’s hand; she offered it to him as if it were an object and explained that actually she barely remembered her father and had only said that for Mother’s sake—She remembered the settled March snow, full of holes, the lacquered shine of the car, and how it smelled inside, and the chauffeur’s steel teeth, his cap… The cloud of her father’s cologne, the creak of the seat, his angry nape, and the naked trees flashing past the window—they were going somewhere… And another day— May, golden, with a harsh sweet wind coming through the window, and the apartment upside down, either the carpets being sent to the cleaners or the winter things being put away in mothballs, everything shifted, people running back and forth. And Pavel Antonovich’s wrathful horrible shout in the hallway, thumping footsteps on the floor; he throws something heavy, bursts into the room, and powerful and red, he pushes through, trampling the teddy bear, trampling the doll’s tea, and the May sun was indignant, shaking and splashing from the lenses of his glasses. The reason was trifling—the dog might have made a mess near the door. But in fact the dog was nothing, an excuse, it was just that life had begun to turn its not-good side toward Pavel Antonovich. And they didn’t have anything to drive in, anymore.
His mother-in-law returned with the rolls and fresh tea, Lenochka put her hand back in its place, a used object. Lenochka was rather cool for a new bride, she smiled too politely, she burned at half-steam; and what was hidden, what thoughts flashed behind those watercolor eyes? Pale cheeks, hair like seaweed along those cheeks, weak hands, light feet—it was all enchanting, and even though Sergei basically liked his women sturdy, colorful, and black-browed, like the dolls made in Vyatka, he could not resist Lenochka’s watery charms. She entwined herself around him, not hot, her soul friable and inaccessible, with puny female problems: a cough; my shoes are too big; drive a nail in right there, Seryozha—he hammered, twisting the shoes as small as saucers in his hands, everything falls off the tiny Snow Fairy—and rubbed Lenochka’s narrow back with oil of turpentine.
He married in fear and delight, hazarding a guess, understanding nothing: neither who Lenochka was nor why he had chosen her; he’d find out with time. She was a frail girl, and he was her protector and support, and his mother-in-law was a sweet lady, amiable and tolerably silly, a home economics teacher. She taught girls to sew aprons, to bind seams, or something. Theory of sewing, the basics of fire safety. “A stitch is the intertwining of thread with fabric between two needle punctures.” “A fire is the burning of objects not intended for burning.” Cozy, feminine work. At home, there was family coziness, the family hearth, the modest and respectable space of a three-room apartment, the legacy of the severe Pavel Antonovich. The hallway was lined with books, something was always cooking in the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen was a tiny room, a cell—they always built this way, Seryozha dear, for the maids; this is where that horrible Panya lived, and Klava with the pink comb: do you want me to turn it into your study, a man needs a study of his own. Of course he liked. A small room, but totally his now—what could be better? The table by the window, the chair here, a bookshelf behind him. In the summer, poplar fluff would fly in through the window, and birdsong and children’s voices… Your hand, Maria Maximovna. Allow me to kiss it. There, isn’t everything fine?
Why, she can’t even imagine how fine it is, what a miracle, what a gift from the gods that room and that family were—for him, an orphan, a boy without a name, without a father, a mother. They invented it all for him at the orphanage: name, surname, age. He had no childhood, his childhood had been burnt up, bombed at an unknown railroad station; someone pulled him out of the fire, threw him on the ground, turning him over and over, slapping his head with a fur hat to put out the flames…. He hadn’t understood that the hat had saved him, a big black smelly hat—it knocked the memory out of him, he had nightmares about that hat, it screamed and blew up and deafened him—he had stammered a long time afterward, crying and covering his head with his hands when they tried to dress him at the home. How old had he been—three, four? And now, in the mid-70s, he, a grown man, felt his heart flipflop when he passed a store with fur hats on display. He would stop and stare, forcing himself to do it, trying to remember: Who am I? Where am I from? Whose son am I? After all, I did have a mother, someone gave birth to me, loved me, was taking me somewhere.
In the summer he played on trampled playgrounds with children just like him, burned and nameless, pulled out from under wheels. They held hands and formed two lines. “Ali Babà, hey!” “What do you say?” “Pull the line away!” “From which end of the day?” “From dawn and send Seryozha this way.” And he would run in his gray orphanage pants from one line to the other, from his family into another, to push apart the thin clasped hands, and to join them, the strangers, if he could, feeling proud of his strength yet a little treacherous too.
Long winters, hungry eyes, shaved heads, some adult giving a quick pat on the head as he ran past; the smell of mice in the sheets, the dull light. The older boys beat him, demanded that he steal for them, tempting him with a chunk of undercooked bread under his nose—we’ll share it with you, climb through that narrow window, you’re skinny, you’ll squeeze through. But someone invisible and inaudible seemed to be shaking her head, eyes closed: don’t, don’t take it. Was it his mother, giving him a sign from dark, shattered time, from the other side, beyond the hat; were incorporeal powers protecting him? He finished school and his file said: “Morally stable, orderly.” His longing for his mother, who was nowhere, ate away at him quietly. The idea that in the final analysis, everyone was descended from the apes, somehow did not console him. He invented mothers for himself, imagined himself the son of a favorite teacher—she had lost a small boy and she was looking for him, asking everyone if they had seen him. Skinny and afraid of a hat? And he, he was right there, in the front row, and she didn’t even know it. She would take a good look and cry out, “Seryozha, is that you? Why didn’t you say anything?” He was the son of the cook—he helped slice bread in the kitchen, glancing at her white cap and quick hands, trembling, waiting for the recognition to come; he stared at women in the street—in vain, they all ran past.