Spring came and spring went and came again, and spread out blue flowers in the meadows and waved her hand and called through his sleep, “Peters! Peters!” but he slept soundly and heard nothing.
Summer rustled, wandered free in gardens, sitting on benches, swinging bare feet in the dust, calling Peters out on the warm street, the hot sidewalks; whispered, sparkling in the shimmer of linden trees, in the flutter of poplars; called, didn’t get an answer, and left, dragging its hem, into the light part of the horizon.
Life got on tiptoe and peered into the window in surprise: why was Peters asleep, why wasn’t he coming out to play its cruel games?
But Peters slept and slept and lived in his dream: neatly wiping his mouth, he ate vegetables and drank dairy products; he shaved his dull face—around his shut mouth and under his sleeping eyes—and once, accidentally, in passing, he married a cold, hard woman with big feet, with a dull name. The woman regarded people severely, knowing that people were crooks, that you couldn’t trust anyone; her basket held dry bread.
She took Peters with her everywhere, holding his hand tight, the way his grandmother once did, on Sundays they went to the zoological museum, into the resonant, polite halls—to look at still, woolen mice or the white bones of a whale; on weekdays they went out to stores, bought dead yellow macaroni, old people’s brown soap, and watched heavy vegetable oil pour through the narrow funnel, as thick as depression, endless and viscous, like the sands of the Arabian desert.
“Tell me,” the woman asked severely, “are the chickens chilled? Give me that one.” And “that one” is placed in the old shopping bag, and sleeping Peters carried home the cold young chicken, who had known neither love nor freedom, nor green grass nor the merry round eye of a girlfriend. And at home, under the watchful eye of the hard woman, Peters himself had to open up the chest of the chilled creature with knife and axe and tear out the slippery purplish heart, the red roses of the lungs, and the blue breathing stalk, in order to wipe out the memory in the ages of the one who was born and hoped, moved his young wings and dreamed of a green royal tail, of pearl grains, of the golden dawn over the waking world.
The summers and winters slipped by and melted, dissolving and fading, harvests of rainbows hung over distant houses, young greedy blizzards marauded from the northern forests, moving time forward, and the day came when the woman with big feet abandoned Peters, quietly shutting the door and leaving to buy soap and stir pots for another. Then Peters carefully opened his eyes and woke up.
The clock was ticking, fruit compote floated in a glass pitcher, and his slippers had grown cold overnight. Peters felt himself, counted his fingers and hairs. Regret flickered and passed. His body still remembered the quiet of past years, the heavy sleep of the calendar, but in the depths of his spiritual flesh something long forgotten, young and trusting, was stirring, sitting up, shaking itself, and smiling.
Old Peters pushed the window frame—the blue glass rang, a thousand yellow birds flew up, and the naked golden spring cried, laughing: catch me, catch me! New children played in the puddles with their buckets. And wanting nothing, regretting nothing, Peters smiled gratefully at life—running past, indifferent, ungrateful, treacherous, mocking, meaningless, alien —marvelous, marvelous, marvelous.
SLEEPWALKER IN A FOG
HAVING made it halfway through his earthly life, Denisov grew pensive. He started thinking about life, about its meaning, about the fleetingness of his half-spent existence, about his nighttime fears, about the vermin of the earth, about the beautiful Lora and several other women, about the fact that summers were humid nowadays, and about distant countries, in whose existence, truth be told, he found it hard to believe.
Australia aroused special doubt. He was prepared to believe in New Guinea, in the squeaky snap of its fleshy greenery, in the muggy swamps and black crocodiles: a strange place, but, all right. He conceded the existence of the tiny, colorful Philippines, he was ready to grant the light blue stopper of Antarctica—it hung right over his head, threatening to dislodge and shower him with stinging iceberg chips. Stretching out on a sofa with stiff, antediluvian bolsters and worn-out springs, smoking, Denisov glanced at the map of the hemispheres and disapproved of the continents’ placement. The top part’s not bad, reasonable enough: Landmasses here, water there, it’ll do. Another couple of seas in Siberia wouldn’t hurt. Africa could be lower. India’s all right. But down below everything’s badly laid out: the continents narrow down to nothing, islands are strewn about with no rhyme or reason, there are all kinds of troughs and trenches…. And Australia is obviously neither here nor there: anyone can see that logically there should be water in its place, but just look what you’ve got! Denisov blew smoke at Australia and scanned the water-stained ceiling: on the floor above him lived a seafaring captain, as white, gold, and magnificent as a dream, as ephemeral as smoke, as unreal as the dark blue southern seas. Once or twice a year he materialized, showed up at home, took a bath, and drenched Denisov’s apartment along with everything in it, though there wasn’t anything in it other than the sofa and Denisov. Well, a refrigerator stood in the kitchen. A tactful man, Denisov couldn’t bring himself to ask: What’s the matter?—especially since no later than the morning following the cataclysm the splendid captain would ring the doorbell, hand him an envelope with a couple of hundred rubles—for repairs—and depart with a firm stride. He was off on a new voyage.
Denisov reflected on Australia irritatedly; on his fiancee, Lora, distractedly. Everything had already been pretty much decided; sooner or later he intended to become her fourth husband, not because she lit up the world, as the saying goes, but because with her no light was needed. In the light she talked incessantly, saying whatever came into her head.
“An awful lot of women,” said Lora, “dream of having a tail. Think about it yourself. First of all, wouldn’t it be pretty—a thick fluffy tail, it could be striped, black and white, for example—that would look good on me—and you know, on Pushkin Square I saw a little fur coat that would have been just the thing for that kind of tail. Short, with wide sleeves, and a shawl collar. It would go with a black skirt like the one that Katerina Ivanna made for Ruzanna, but Ruzanna wants to sell, so just imagine—if you had a tail, you could get by in a coat without a collar. Wrap it around your neck—and you’re all warm. Then, say you’re going to the theater. A simple open dress, and over it—your own fur. Fabulous! Second, it would be convenient. In the metro you could hold on to the straps with it; if it’s too hot—you’ve got a fan; and if someone gets fresh—slap him with your tail! Wouldn’t you like me to have a tail?… What do you mean, you don’t care?”
“Ah, my beauty, I should have your worries,” Denisov said morosely.
But Denisov knew that he himself was no prize—with his smoke-stale jacket, his ponderous thoughts, his nocturnal heart palpitations, his predawn fear of dying and being forgotten, being erased from human memory, vanishing without a trace in the air.
Half of his earthly life was behind him, ahead lay the second half, the bad half. At this rate Denisov would just whir over the earth and depart, and no one would have reason to remember him! Petrovs and Ivanovs die every day, their simple names are carved in marble. Why couldn’t Denisov linger on some memorial plaque, why couldn’t his profile grace the neighborhood of Orekhovo-Borisovo? “In this house I dwell…. ” Now he was going to marry Lora and die—she wouldn’t have it in her to make an appeal to the place where these things are decided, whether or not to immortalize… “Comrades, immortalize my fourth husband, okay? Comrades, pleeease.” “Ho-ho-ho…” Who was he anyway, in point of fact? He hadn’t composed anything, or sung anything, or shot anyone. He hadn’t discovered anything new and named it after himself. And for that matter, everything had already been discovered, enumerated, denominated; everything alive and dead, from cockroaches to comets, from cheese mold to the spiral arms of abstruse nebulae. Take some old virus—swill, worthless rubbish, couldn’t make a chicken sneeze, but no, it’s already been grabbed, named, and adopted by a couple of your scholarly Germans—just have a look at today’s paper. If you think about it—how do they share it? They probably found the useless bit of scum in some unwashed glass and fainted from happiness—then the shoving and shouting started: “Mine!” “No, mine!” They smashed eyeglasses, ripped suspenders, gave each other a thrashing, puffed and panted, then sat down with the glass on the sofa and embraced: “Hey, pal, let’s go fifty-fifty!” “All right, what can I do with you?…”