My objective was to spend some time on Staraya Street. And I could have got there by another, quicker route. But the reason I turned into a late hour these spacious streets with gardens was that I wanted to take a look at the grammar school. And reaching it, I marvelled again: here too everything had remained as half a century before; the stone boundary wall, the stone yard, the big stone building in the yard – everything just as conventional, boring as it had been before, in my time. I lingered by the gates, wanting to provoke in myself the sorrow, the pity of memories – and couldn’t. Yes, I had first entered these gates as a first-year with close-cropped hair[61] in a nice, new blue cap with silver palms over the peak, and in a new little greatcoat with silver buttons, then as a thin youth in a grey jacket and foppish trousers with straps under the feet – but is that really me?
Staraya Street seemed to me just a little narrower and longer than it had before. Everything else was unchanging, like everywhere. The potholed roadway, not a single little tree, on both sides the white, dusty houses of provincial merchants, the pavements potholed as well, such that it would be better to walk down the middle of the street in the full light of the moon… And the night was almost the same as that one. Only that one had been at the end of August, when the whole town smells of the apples which lie in mountains at the markets, and was so warm that it was a delight to be wearing just a kosovorotka with a Caucasian belt around it… Is it possible to remember that night somewhere up there, as if in the sky?
I could not make up my mind to go as far as your house after all. It too had probably not changed, but all the more terrible to see it. Some new people, strangers, live in it now. Your father, your mother, your brother – they all outlived young you, but also died when their time came. And every one of mine has died too, and not only my relatives, but also many, many with whom I began life in friendship or comradeship; was it so long ago that they too began, certain in their hearts there would be simply no end to it, but everything has begun, elapsed and come to an end before my eyes – so quickly, and before my eyes! And I sat down on a bollard beside some merchant’s house, impregnable behind its locks and gates, and started thinking about what she was like in those distant times of ours: simply dressed dark hair, a clear gaze, the light tan of a youthful face, a light summer dress, beneath which were the chastity, strength and freedom of a young body… That was the start of our love, a time of happiness as yet unclouded by anything, of intimacy, trustfulness, enraptured tenderness, joy…
There is something utterly special about the warm and bright nights of Russian provincial towns at the end of summer. What peace, what well-being! An old man wanders through the cheerful nocturnal town with a watchman’s rattle, but solely for his own pleasure: there’s no need to keep watch, sleep peacefully, good people; you are watched over by God’s goodwill, by this lofty, radiant sky, at which the old man casts the odd carefree glance as he wanders down the roadway, heated up in the course of the day, just occasionally, for fun, letting go a dancing shake of the rattle. And it was on such a night, at that late hour when just he alone in the town was not asleep, you were waiting for me in your family’s garden, already a little dried up towards autumn, and I slipped into it by stealth[62]: I quietly opened the gate, unlocked in advance by you, quietly and quickly ran through the yard and, behind the shed in the depths of the yard, entered the dappled twilight of the garden where, in the distance, on the bench under the apple trees, the whiteness of your dress was faintly visible, and approaching quickly, with joyous fright, I met the lustre of your waiting eyes.
And we sat, sat in a sort of bewilderment of happiness. With one hand I embraced you, sensing the beating of your heart, in the other I held your hand, feeling through it the whole of you. And it was already so late that even the rattle was not to be heard – the old man had laid down on a bench somewhere and dozed off with his pipe in his teeth, warming himself in the light of the moon. When I looked to the right, I could see the moon shining high and sinless above the yard, and the roof of the house gleaming with piscine lustre. When I looked to the left, I saw a path, overgrown with dry grasses, disappearing under more apple trees, and beyond them, peeping out low from behind some other garden, a solitary green star, glimmering impassively, and at the same time expectantly, and soundlessly saying something. But both the yard and the star I saw only in glimpses – there was one thing in the world: the delicate twilight and the radiant twinkling in the twilight of your eyes.
And then you accompanied me as far as the gate, and I said:
“If there is a future life and we meet in it, I shall kneel down there and kiss your feet for all that you gave me on earth.”
I went out into the middle of the bright street and set off for my town-house lodgings. Turning back, I saw there was still whiteness in the gateway.
Now, rising from the bollard, I set off back by the same route by which I had come. No, I had, apart from Staraya Street, another objective too, one which I was afraid to acknowledge to myself, but the fulfilment of which was, I knew, unavoidable. And I set off – to take a look and leave, this time for ever.
The road was again familiar. Always straight ahead, then to the left, through the market, and from the market – along Monastyrskaya – towards the exit from town.
The market is like another town within the town. Very strong-smelling rows of stalls. In the refreshments row, under awnings above long tables and benches, it is gloomy. In the hardware row[63], on a chain over the middle of the passage hangs an icon of a big-eyed Saviour in a rusty setting. In the flour row in the mornings there was always a whole flock of pigeons running about and pecking along the roadway. You’re on your way to school – what a lot of them! And all fat, with iridescent craws – they peck and run, waggling their tails in a feminine way, swinging from side to side, twitching their heads monotonously, not seeming to notice you: they fly up, their wings whistling, only when you almost step on one of them. And here in the night-time large, dark rats, foul and ugly, rushed around quickly, preoccupied.
Monastyrskaya Street juts out into the fields, and is then a road: for some, out of town towards home, to the village, for others – to the town of the dead. In Paris, house number such-and-such in such-and-such a street is marked out from all other houses for two days by the pestilential stage properties of the porch, of its coal-black and silver frame, for two days a sheet of paper in a coal-black border lies in the porch on the coal-black shroud of a little table – polite visitors sign their names on it as a mark of sympathy; then, at a certain final time, by the porch stops a huge chariot with a coal-black canopy, the wood of which is black, resinous, like a plague coffin, the rounded cut-outs of the skirts of the canopy bear witness to the heavens with large white stars, while the corners of the top are crowned with curly, coal-black plumes – the feathers of an ostrich from the underworld; harnessed to the chariot are strapping monsters in coal-black horned horse cloths with white-ringed eye sockets; on the interminably high coach box sits an old drunkard waiting for the bearing-out, symbolically dressed up too in a theatrical burial uniform and a similar three-cornered hat, probably forever smirking inwardly at those solemn words: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis[64].” Here everything is different. A breeze blows down Monastyrskaya from the fields, and the open coffin is carried into it on towels, while the rice-coloured face with a vivid ribbon on the forehead above the closed, bulging eyes rocks from side to side. She too was carried thus.
At the exit, to the left of the highway, is a monastery from the times of Alexei Mikhailovich[65], fortress gates, always closed, and fortress walls, from behind which gleam the gilded turnips of the cathedral. Further on, quite out in the fields, is a very extensive square of more walls, but low ones: confined within them is an entire grove of trees broken up by long, intersecting prospects, down the sides of which, beneath old elms, limes and birches[66], all is sown with diverse crosses and memorials. Here the gates were open wide, and I saw the main prospect, regular, endless. I tentatively took off my hat and entered. How late and how mute! The moon was already low behind the trees, but all around was still clearly visible as far as the eye could see. The entire expanse of this grove of dead men, its crosses and memorials, was decorated with dappled patterns in the transparent shade. The wind had died down towards the hour before dawn – the light and dark patches that made everything under the trees dappled were sleeping. In a distant part of the grove, from behind the graveyard church, there was a sudden glimpse of something, and it rushed at me in a dark ball at a furious pace – beside myself, I staggered aside, my entire head immediately turned to ice and tightened up, my heart gave a leap and froze. What was it? It rushed by and disappeared. But still my heart remained standing still in my breast. And thus, with my heart stopped, carrying it within me like a burdensome chalice, I moved on. I knew where I had to go, I kept walking straight ahead down the prospect – and at its very end, just a few paces from the rear wall, I stopped: before me, in a level spot, among dry grasses, there lay in solitude an elongated and quite narrow stone, its head towards the wall. And from behind the wall, like a wondrous gem, gazed a low, green star, radiant, like that previous one, but mute and motionless.
19th October 1938Part Two
Rusya
After ten o’clock in the evening, the Moscow-Sebastopol fast train stopped at a small station beyond Podolsk where it was not due to make a stop, waiting for something on the second track. On the train, a gentleman and a lady went up to a lowered window of the first-class carriage. A conductor with a red lamp in his dangling hand was crossing the rails, and the lady asked:
“Listen. Why are we standing still?”
The conductor replied that the oncoming express train was late.
The station was dark and sad. Twilight had fallen long before, but in the west, behind the station, beyond the blackening, wooded fields, the long summer Moscow sunset still gave off a deathly glow. Through the window came the damp smell of marshland. Audible from somewhere in the silence was the steady – and as though damp too – screeching of a corncrake.
He leant on the window, she on his shoulder.
“I stayed in this area during the holidays once,” he said. “I was a tutor on a dacha estate about five kilometres from here. It’s a boring area. Scrubland, magpies, mosquitoes and dragonflies. No view anywhere. On the estate you could only admire the horizon from the mezzanine[67]. The house was in the Russian dacha style, of course, and very neglected – the owners were impoverished people – behind the house was some semblance of a garden, beyond the garden not exactly a lake, not exactly a marsh, overgrown with sedge and water lilies, and the inevitable flat-bottomed boat beside the swampy bank.”
“And, of course, a bored dacha maiden whom you took out boating around the marsh.”
“Yes, everything as it’s meant to be. Only the maiden wasn’t at all bored. I took her out boating at night mostly, and it was even poetic, as it turned out. All night in the west the sky’s greenish, pellucid, and there, on the horizon, just like now, there’s something forever smouldering and smouldering… There was only one oar to be found, and that like a spade, and I paddled with it like a savage – first to the right, then to the left. The opposite bank was dark from the scrubland, but beyond it there was this strange half-light all night long. And everywhere unimaginable quietness – only the mosquitoes whining and the dragonflies flying around. I never thought they flew at night – it turned out that for some reason they do. Really terrifying.”
At last there was the noise of the oncoming train, it flew upon them with a clattering and wind, merging into a single golden strip of lighted windows, and rushed on by. The carriage immediately moved off. The carriage attendant entered the compartment, put the light on and began preparing the beds.
“Well, and what was there between you and this maiden? A real romance? You’ve never told me about her for some reason. What was she like?”
“Thin, tall. She wore a yellow cotton sarafan and peasants’ shoes woven from some multicoloured wool on bare feet.”
“In the Russian style as well then?”
“Most of all in the style of poverty, I think. Nothing to put on, hence the sarafan. Apart from that[68], she was an artist, she studied at the Stroganov School of Painting[69]. And she was like a painting herself, like an icon even. A long, black plait on her back, a swarthy face with little dark moles, a narrow, regular nose, black eyes, black brows… Dry and wiry hair which was slightly curly. With the yellow sarafan and the white muslin sleeves of her blouse, it all stood out very prettily. The ankle bones and the beginning of the foot in the woollen shoes – all wiry, with bones sticking out under the thin, swarthy skin.”
“I know the type. I had a friend like that at college. Probably hysterical.”
“It’s possible. Especially as she resembled her mother facially, and the mother, some sort of princess by birth, with oriental blood, suffered from something like manic depression. She’d emerge only to come to the table. She’d emerge, sit down and say nothing, cough a bit, without raising her eyes, and keep on moving first her knife, then her fork. And if she did suddenly start talking, then it was so unexpected and loud that it gave you a start.”
“And her father?”
“Taciturn and dry as well, tall: a retired military man. Only their boy, whom I was tutoring, was straightforward and nice.”
The carriage attendant left the compartment, said that the beds were ready, and wished us a good night.
“And what was her name?”
“Rusya.”
“What sort of name is that?”
“A very simple one – Marusya.”
“Well, and so were you very much in love with her?”
“Of course, terribly, so it seemed.”
“And she?”
He paused and replied drily:
“It probably seemed so to her as well. But let’s go to bed. I’m terribly tired after today.”
“Very nice! Just got me interested for nothing. Well, tell me, if only in two words, what brought your romance to an end and how.”
“Nothing at all. I left, and that was the end of the matter.”
“Why ever didn’t you marry her?”
“I evidently had a premonition that I’d meet you.”
“No, seriously.”
“Well, because I shot myself, and she stabbed herself with a dagger…”
And after washing and cleaning their teeth, they shut themselves into the tight space formed by the compartment, undressed, and with the delight of travellers lay down beneath the fresh, shiny linen of the sheets, onto similar pillows that kept slipping from the slightly raised bedhead.
The bluish lilac peephole above the door gazed quietly into the darkness. She soon dropped off, but he did not sleep, he lay smoking, and in his thoughts looked back at that summer…
She also had a lot of little dark moles on her body – that peculiarity was charming. Because she went about in soft footwear, without heels, her entire body undulated beneath the yellow sarafan. The sarafan was loose, light, and her long, girlish body was so free in it. One day she got her feet wet in the rain, ran into the drawing room from the garden, and he rushed to take off her shoes and kiss her wet, narrow soles – in the whole of his life there had not been such happiness. The fresh, fragrant rain rattled ever faster and heavier beyond the doors, open onto the balcony, in the darkened house everyone was sleeping after dinner – and how dreadfully he and she were frightened by some black and metallic-green-tinted cockerel, wearing a big, fiery crown, which ran in suddenly from the garden too, with a tapping of talons across the floor, at that most ardent of moments when they had forgotten any kind of caution. Seeing how they leapt up from the couch, it ran back into the rain, hastily and bending down, as though out of tactfulness, with its gleaming tail lowered…