“So what? Mother is still upset.”
“Yes, but how long can she keep it up? You’d think she’s a suffering Akaky Akakiyevich without his overcoat!”
“I don’t understand you. What is it, are your sympathies with the thieves?”
“What does that have to do with it—And besides, didn’t he steal it?”
“Papa? Papa was the most honest of men.”
An uneducated woman, that Panya. She split, vanished, disappeared. A village woman, her husband died at the front. The pink comb. No, Klava had the comb. No face, no voice—just a total blank. He was Panya’s son. Perhaps; perhaps. His father died, and she fled with him through swamps, sinking; pushed her way through forests, tripping; begged for hot water at railroad stations, wailing. The train, the explosion. The tracks turned into corkscrews, the hat across his face, the black hat to knock out his memory. You lie there, peering into the dark— deeper, deeper, to the limit—no, there’s a wall there. Panya lost him at the station. She was taken away unconscious. She woke up—where’s Seryozha? Or Petya, Vitya, Yegorushka? Someone must have seen them putting out a burning boy. She goes, seeking him from town to town. Opens all the doors, knocks at all the windows: have you seen him? A dark kerchief and sunken eyes… Takes a job working for Pavel Antonovich. Are you the death of me, will you eat me? No, I’m a bunny, a gray bunny. “Panya, come with me, you’ll hold my fur coat.” Wait, don’t go! “Mistress, I’ve lost my son, what do I care for your coat?” Let her stay home. And another twenty-five years in that room. Then Sergei marries Lenochka, comes to the house, Panya takes a good look and recognizes him…. She couldn’t have stolen it, she had shut her eyes and shook her head: don’t take it. In case of suspected incident send an urgent report. Domestic, attic, migrant, field… Silk lining. Seryozha, drive a nail there.
All right, what if she did steal it! Impoverished, starving like those thieving boys, her house burned down, her son lost, her husband dead in the swamps. What if she had been tempted by the purple lilies of the valley? I won’t hammer a nail into her. I am her son. Panya is my mother, that’s decided, everyone must know. Why did he take the coat from the hook? That coat belonged to Panya’s husband, he should have reached it, crawled there, extended his scorched hand toward it—no, he wouldn’t have taken it, he wouldn’t have stooped to that. But you, high and mighty gentleman, you stooped. And I am martied to your daughter. Pavel Antonovich is my father. Otherwise why does he torment me with the lost fur coat, rustling his medals, sighing behind the wall? Tell me your name. Holding hands tightly, the chain of ancestors walks into the depths, sinking into the dark jelly of time. Stand with us, nameless one, join us. Find your link in the chain. Pavel Antonovich, Anton Felixovich, Felix Kazimirovich. You are our descendant, you lay on our bed, loved Lenochka without blinking an eye, you ate our sweet rolls—every single currant in them we had to tear away from domestic, attic, and field rats; for you we coughed up horrible phlegm and let our nodes swell, for you we infected camels that spat in our face—you can’t get away from us. We built this for you, you nameless and clean boy, this house, this hearth, kitchen, hallway, bedroom, cubby, we lit the lamps and set up the books. We punished those who lifted their hands to steal our property. Ali Babà, hey! What do you say? Pull the line away. From which end of the day?
Panya stole from family. But Pavel Antonovich stole from strangers. Panya confessed. Pavel Antonovich suffered from slander. The scales of justice are balanced. And what did you do? You came, you ate, you judged? In anti-plague goggles and rubber boots, with an enormous syringe, Pavel Antonovich approached the camel. I am your death, I’ll eat you up! Mice get sick, and so do rabbits. Everyone gets sick. Everyone. No need to brag.
Lenochka did not wish to hear about Sergei’s hat anymore. As if there were nothing else to talk about. And really… Children, don’t shout! I don’t understand who she is. Why she married me. If she doesn’t care about anything… She’s waterlogged…. Not a person, but soap suds. Seryozha, you’re shouting so loudly. Just like Pavel Antonovich. Hush, hush. In her condition, Lenochka needs peace.
Lenochka, don’t be mad at me. All right, all right, Seryozha. Drive a nail there—to hang up the diapers. Why don’t you sleep in the study, won’t little Antosha let you get any sleep? The shadow of leaves falls on the tiny face, the lace-trimmed sheet; the infant sleeps, his wrinkled fists raised, his brow furrowed—struggling to understand something. The fishies are asleep in the pond. The birdies are asleep in the trees. Who’s breathing outside in the garden? We don’t care, my love.
Sweet dreams, sonny, you’re not to blame for anything at all. The plague corpses in the cemetery are covered with lime, the poppies on the steppe bring sweet dreams, the camels are locked up in the zoos, warm leaves rustle and whisper over your head. What about? What do you care?
SONYA
A PERSON lived—a person died. Only the name remains—Sonya. “Remember, Sonya used to say…” “A dress like Sonya’s…” “You keep blowing your nose all the time, like Sonya…” Then even the people who used to say that died, and there was only a trace of her voice in my head, incorporeal, seeming to come from the black jaws of the telephone receiver. Or all of a sudden there is a view of a sunny room, like a bright photograph come to life—laughter around a set table, like those hyacinths in a glass vase on the tablecloth, wreathed too with curly pink smiles. Look quickly, before it goes out. Who is that? Is the one you need among them? But the bright room trembles and fades and now the backs of the seated people are translucent like gauze, and with frightening speed, their laugh-ter falls to pieces, recedes in the distance—catch it if you can.
No, wait, let me look at you. Sit as you were and call out your names in order. But it is futile to try grasping recollections with clumsy corporeal hands. The merry laughing figure turns into a large, crudely painted rag doll and will fall off its chair if it’s not propped up; on its meaningless forehead are drips of glue from the moplike wig; the blue glassy eyes are joined inside the empty skull by a metal arc with a lead ball for counterweight. Just look at that, the old hag! When you think she pretended to be alive and loved. But the laughing company has flown up and away, and contrary to the iron laws of space and time is chattering away in some inaccessible corner of the world, incorruptible unto eternity, festively immortal, and might even appear again at some turn in the road—at the most inappropriate moment, and of course without warning.
Well, if that’s the way you are, so be it. Chasing you is like catching butterflies waving a shovel. But I would like to learn more about Sonya.
One thing is clear—Sonya was an utter fool. No one has ever disputed that quality of hers, and now there is no one to do it anyway. Invited out to dinner for the first time, in the distant, yellowish-smoke-shrouded year of 1930, she sat like a dummy at the end of a long, starched table, in front of a napkin cone folded into a house, as was then customary. The bouillon pond cooled. The idle spoon lay before her. The dignity of all the kings of England froze Sonya’s equine features.
“And you, Sonya,” they said to her (they must have addressed her more formally, using her patronymic, hopelessly lost now), “and you, Sonya, why aren’t you eating?”
“Waiting for the pepper,” she replied severely with her icy upper lip.
Actually, after some time had passed and Sonya’s irreplaceability in the kitchen for pre-party preparations and her sewing skills and her willingness to take other people’s children for walks and even babysit if the whole noisy group was heading for some unpostponable festivity became evident—with the passage of time, the crystal of Sonya’s stupidity sparkled with other facets, exquisite in its unpredictability. A sensitive instrument, Sonya’s soul apparently captured the tonality of the mood of the society that had sheltered her yesterday, but, gawking, she failed to attune herself to today’s mood. So, if Sonya gaily shouted out, “Bottoms up!” at a wake, it was clear she was still at somebody’s birthday party; while at weddings, Sonya’s toasts gave off the gloom of yesterday’s funeral meats.