Filin wasn’t offensive to the eye, either—clean, not large, wearing an at-home velvet jacket, a small hand weighted down with a ring. And not a clichéd, corny, “ruble fifty with the box” ring—why no, his is straight from an excavation, Venetian if he’s not lying, or a setting of a coin from, God help me, Antioch, or something even grander than that…. That was Filin.
He’ll sit in a chair dangling his slipper, fingers folded in a tent, eyebrows like pitch—marvelous Anatolian eyes like soot, a dry silvery beard that rustled, black only around the mouth, as if he had been eating coal.
Plenty to look at.
Filin’s women weren’t run-of-the-mill, either—collector’s rarities. Either a circus performer, say, twisting on a trapeze silvery scales shimmering, to a drum roll; or simply a young woman, a mama’s girl who dabbled in water colors, a brain the size of a kopek but dazzlingly white, so that Filin, in issuing his invitation to view, will warn you to bring sunglasses to avoid snow blindness.
Some people privately didn’t approve of Filin, with all those rings, pastries, and snuffboxes; they giggled over his raspberry robe with tassels and those supposedly silver Mongol slippers with turned-up noses; and it was funny that in his bathroom he had a special brush for his beard and hand cream: a bachelor… But whenever he called, they came; and secretly always worried: would he invite them again? Would he let them sit in the warmth and light, in comfort and luxury, and in general— what did he ever see in us ordinary people, what does he need us for?
“If you’re not busy tonight, please come at eight. Meet Alisa, a cha-arming creature.”
“Thank you, thank you, of course.”
Well, as usual, at the last minute! Yura reached for his razor, and Galya, slithering into her panty hose like a snake, left instructions with her daughter: the kasha is in the pot, don’t open the door to anyone, do your homework, and straight to bed. And don’t hang on me, let go, we’re late already. Galya stuffed plastic bags into her purse: Filin lived in a high-rise, with a grocery store on the ground floor; maybe they’ll have herring oil, or something else.
Beyond the house the boundary road lay like a hoop of darkness where the frosty wind howled, the cold of uninhabited plains penetrated your clothes, and the world for a second seemed as horrible as a graveyard; and they didn’t want to wait for a bus or be squashed in the metro and they got a taxi; and lounging comfortably, cautiously berated Filin for his velvet jacket, for his collector’s passion, for the unknown Alisa: where’s the last one, that Ninochka? nowhere to be found now; and wondered whether Matvei Matveich would be there, and roundly denounced Matvei Matveich.
They had met him at Filin’s and were charmed by the old man: those stories of his about the reign of Anna Ivanovna and those pastries, and the steam from English tea, and blue-and-gold collector’s cups, and Mozart bubbling from somewhere up above, and Filin caressing the guests with his Mephistophelian eyes—and, oh, heads spinning—they got Matvei Matveich to invite them. Some visit! He received them in the kitchen, the floor was made of planks, the walls brown and bare, a horrible neighborhood, nothing but fences and potholes, and he was wearing jogging pants that were threadbare and the tea was stale and the jam crystallized, and he just thumped the jar on the table, stuck a spoon in it—dig it out yourselves, dear guests. And you had to smoke on the landing: asthma, please understand. And Anna Ivanovna was a flop, too. They sat down—the hell with the tea—to listen to his purring speech about palace intrigues, all kinds of revolts; but the old man kept untying these awful folders and poking them with his finger shouting about land reform and that Kuzin, the mediocrity clerk backstabber, won’t let him get published and has set the whole department against Matvei Matveich, but here, here: invaluable documents, he’d been collecting them all his life. Galya and Yura wanted to hear about villains, torture, the ice house, and the dwarf wedding, but Filin wasn’t there to steer the conversation to interesting topics, and all they heard that evening was Ku-u-zin! Ku-u-uzin! and the finger-jabbing of the files, and the valerian sedative drops. They put the old man to bed and left, and Galya tore her panty hose on the old man’s chair.
“What about Vlasov the bard?” Yura recalled.
“Bite your tongue!”
With him, it was just the opposite; but the shame was terrible: they picked him up at Filin’s, too, and invited him to their house and invited lots of guests to hear him sing, spent two hours in line to get a special cake. They locked their daughter in her room and the dog in the kitchen. Vlasov the bard came, grim, with his guitar, didn’t even try the cake: cream softens the voice and he wanted his voice hoarse. He sang a couple of songs: “Aunt Motya, your shoulders, your pecs and cheeks, like Nadia Comaneci, are developed by gymnastique…” Yura made a fool of himself, showing his ignorance, loudly whispering in the middle of the song, “I forget, what part are the pecs?” Galya grew anxious, and, hand laid on heart in emotion, said he must sing “Friends”—it’s such a marvelous, marvelous song. He had sung it at Filin’s—gently, sadly—about “around the table covered with oilcloth, over a bottle of beer” sit a group of old friends, bald, all losers. Each one’s life went wrong, each has his own sorrow: “one can’t love, the other can’t rule”—and no one can help, alas!—but at least they’re together, they’re friends, they need one another, and isn’t that the most important thing in life? You listen and you feel that—yes-yes-yes—the same thing happened in your life, yes, just like it. “What a song. A hit.” Yura whispered. Vlasov the bard frowned even more, looked off into the distance—off into that imagined room where the mutually admiring baldies were uncapping a distant beer; he strummed the guitar and began sadly, “around the table covered with oilcloth…” Julie, locked in the kitchen, scratched at the floor and howled. “With a bottle of beer,” Vlasov continued. “Woof woof woof,” the dog persisted. Someone snorted, the bard put his hand on the strings with an injured air, and took a cigarette. Yura went to deal with Julie.
“Is that autobiographical?” some idiot asked reverently.
“What? All my songs are autobiographical to a degree.”
Yura returned, the bard tossed away his butt, and concentrated. “Around the table, covered with oilcloth…” A tortured howl came from the kitchen.
“A musical dog,” the bard said viciously.
Galya dragged the resisting German shepherd to the neighbors, the bard hurriedly finished the song—the howling came through the co-op’s walls—he shortened his program, and then in the foyer as he zipped up his jacket announced with disgust that he usually charged two rubles a head but since they didn’t know how to organize a creative atmosphere, he’d settle for a ruble apiece. And Galya ran back to the neighbors—a nightmare, lend me a ten—and they, also just before payday, dug around, collecting change and shaking the kids’ piggy bank to the howls of the robbed children and the barking of overjoyed Julie.
Yes, Filin knows how to deal with people, and we sure don’t. Well, maybe next time it’ll go better.
It wasn’t quite eight yet—just enough time to stand in line for paté in the store at the bottom of the block of flats where Filin lived. There’s no trouble finding cows in our suburb, but you just try finding pàté. At three minutes to eight they got into the elevator, and Galya, as usual, looked around and said, “I could live in an elevator like this,” then the polished parquet floor of the landing, the brass plate: “I. I. Filin,” the bell; and then the man himself on the doorstep, black eyes glowing, head tilted to one side: “Punctuality is the politeness of princes…”