The girls moved to the story of the complicated relationship of Olya and Valéry, of Anyuta’s heartlessness, and Peters, drinking his broth, listened openly, entering someone else’s story invisibly, he came in close contact with someone’s secrets, he was standing at the door with bated breath, he felt, smelled, and saw, as if in a magical movie, and it was all unbearably accessible—just reach out—flickering faces, tears in injured eyes, explosions of smiles, sunlight in hair, cascading pink and green sparks, dust motes in the ray and the heat of warmed parquet floors, creaking nearby, in that strange, happy, and lively life.
“We’re done, let’s go!” one beauty commanded the other, and spreading their transparent umbrellas, like signs of another, higher existence, they floated out into the rain and rose into the skies, into the blue beyond the clouds, hidden from his eyes.
Peters selected a rough piece of cardboard from the plastic glass serving as napkin holder and wiped his mouth. Life roared by, bypassing him, and hurried on, like a swift-flowing river goes around a heavy mound of rocks.
The cleaning woman whirled like a sand storm among the tables, flipped her rag in Peters’s face, and deftly picked up twenty dirty dishes and disappeared in the yeasty air.
“It’s not my fault,” Peters said to someone. “It’s not my fault at all. I want to participate. But they won’t take me. No one wants to play with me. Why? But I’ll try harder, I’ll win!”
He went out—under icy splashes, under the cold, lashing water. I’ll win. Win. I’ll clench my teeth and push on through. And I will learn that damned language. There, on Vasiliyevsky Island, in the dampest of Leningrad’s damp, Elizaveta Frantsevna is waiting, swimming like a seal or mermaid, mumbling easily in the dark German tongue. He would come and they would chatter together. O Tannenbaum! O, I repeat, Tannenbaum! How does it go after that? I’ll find out when I get there.
Oh, well, farewell Valentina and her quick sister, ahead lies only an old German woman—he braced himself…. Peters imagined his path, his looplike track in the wet city, and failure, running on his tail, sniffing the waffle prints of his shoes, and the old woman at the end of his path, and in order to confuse fate he hailed a taxi and sailed through the rain—steam rose from his feet, the driver was grim, and he wanted to get out right away. Tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka, ticked away his money.
“Stop here.”
A doorman guarded the entrance to a gilded place—a door into a subcellar, and beyond it muffled music blared, and lamps shone in the windows like long tubes of acid syrup. Young men—all pretenders for Valentina’s hand, farewell Valentina— huddled in front of the door, teeth chattering in the whirlwinds of rain, there was no room in the restaurant, but the doorman, deceived by Peters’s solid appearance, let him in, and Peters passed through and two others slipped in by his side. A good place. Peters took off his hat and raincoat in a dignified manner, promised a tip with his eyes, stepped into the noisy room, and trumpeted his arrival in his handkerchief. A fine place. He ordered a pink cocktail, a pagoda pastry, drank, ate, drank some more, and relaxed. A very, very fine place. And at his elbow appeared a moth-girl, from out of thin air, from the colored cigarette smoke; her red, green dress—the colored lights blinked—blossomed on her like an orchid, and her eyelashes blinked like wings, and bracelets jangled on her thin arms, and she was completely loyal to Peters to her dying breath. He signaled for more pink alcohol, afraid to speak, to scare off the girl, the marvelous Peri, the flying flower, and they sat in silence, as amazed by each other as would be a goat and an angel upon meeting.
He waved his hand—and they gave even more and some meat.
“Ahem,” said Peters, praying to heaven not to recall its messenger right away. “As a child I had a stuffed bunny—a friend in fact and I promised him so much. And now I’m off to my German lesson, ahem.”
“I like stuffed bunnies, they’re really cute,” the Peri noted coldly.
Peters was surprised by the angel’s stupidity—a stuffed bunny couldn’t be cute, he was either a friend or a nonentity, a sack of sawdust.
“And we also played cards and I always got the cat,” Peters recalled.
“Cats are really cute, too,” the girl replied through her teeth, like a familiar lesson, looking over the crowd.
“No! Why do you say that?” Peters countered, getting upset. “That’s not the point. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about life, it keeps teasing you, showing and taking away, showing and taking away. You know, it’s like a shop window, it shines and it’s locked, and you can’t take anything. And, I ask, why not?”
“You’re really cute, too,” the indifferent girl insisted, not listening. “You dropped something.”
When he finally got up from the table, the angel had risen to heaven, and with it, Peters’s wallet and money. Got it. Well. So be it. Peters sat with his leftovers, as immobile as a suitcase, sobering up, imagining how he would have to explain, ask— the scorn and mockery of the coat check—fish for damp rubles in the swampy pockets of his raincoat, shaking out change that slipped fishlike into the lining… The music machine stomped and beat the drums, announcing someone’s coming passion. The cocktail evaporated through his ears. Cuc-koo! There.
What are you, life? A silent theater of Chinese shadows, a chain of dreams, a charlatan’s store? Or a gift of unrequited love—that’s all that is intended for me? What about happiness? What is happiness? Ingrate, you’re alive, you weep love strive fall and that’s not enough? What?… Not enough? Oh, is that so? There isn’t anything else.
“I’m waiting! I’m waiting!” shouted Elizaveta Frantsevna, a quick, curly-haired lady, throwing back latches and bolts, letting in the robbed Peters, dark, dangerous, full of misery up to his throat, to his top tight button.
“This way. Let’s start right away. Sit down on the couch. First lotto, then tea. All right? Quickly take a card. Who has a goat? I have a goat? Who has a guinea hen?”
I’m going to kill her, decided Peters. Elizaveta Frantsevna, look away, I’m going to kill you. You, and my late grand-mother, and the girl with warts, and Valentina, and the fake angel, and all those others—all of them who promised and tricked me, seduced and abandoned me; I’ll kill them in the name of all fat and wheezy, tongue-tied and awkward men, in the name of all of those locked in the dark closet, all those not invited to the party, get ready, Elizaveta Frantsevna, I’m going to smother you with that embroidered pillow. And no one will ever know.
“Frantsevna!” someone shouted and pounded on the door. “Give me three rubles, I’ll wash the hallway for you.”
The urge passed, Peters put aside the pillow. He wanted to sleep. The old woman rustled her money, Peters looked down at the “Domestic Animals” card.
“What are you thinking about? Who has a cat?”
“I have a cat,” Peters said. “Who else has one?” And he sidled out, crushing the cardboard cat in his fist. The hell with life. Sleep, sleep, fall asleep and don’t wake up.